I*  I 

r-  I 

:  cd  I 
i  3j  ■ 

;?  ■ 


7*7 


^4     ^^  rL+<^    C 


L<^  I 


e~  -c    \  ■%.  *  <  < 


^ 


^>t//  e^c~  ^c^+-  £\ 


/> 


Piers  Plowman,  the  Work  of  One  or 

of  Five 


J.  J.  JUSSERAND 


•  «    V        * 


■     *  • 

•  •    •    *      •      » 

•  •    •  • 


•        •        •• 


•      * 
•   •  » 


•    •   •    -    •. 


•  •  •      .  *  j 

•  •       •  *    •  . 

«o  •     «  •    * 

»         •••••• 


*  *  •  •        •  , 


#  ■    i    *      »  t 

*  *+*   *     *  *  * 

•  •    *    j        i 


*    *  *  4*  ■       •  4  « 


Reprinted  from  Modern  Philology,  Vol.  VI,  No.  3,  January,  1909 


PUBLISHED  BY 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS,  CHICAGO 

Foreign  Agents :    London :    Luzac  &  Co. ;    Leipzig:    Otto  Hakrassowitz 


v9 


° 


Modern  Philology 


Vol.  VI  'January,   IQOg  No.  3 


PIERS  PLOWMAN 
THE  WORK  OF  ONE  OR  OF  FIVE 

I 

Next  to  the  Canterbury  Tales,  the  poem  usually  called  Piers 
Plowman  is  the  greatest  literary  work  produced  by  England  during 
the  Middle  Ages;  and  it  was  considered  so  from  the  first,  these 
two  poems  being  almost  equally  popular.  Fifty-seven  manuscripts 
have  preserved  for  us  Chaucer's  tales;  forty-five  Piers  Plowman. 
This  latter  work  is  a  unique  monument,  much  more  singular  and 
apart  from  anything  else  than  Chaucer's  masterpiece.  It  is  more 
thoroughly  English ;  of  foreign  influences  on  it  there  are  but  the 
faintest  traces.  Allegorical  as  it  is,  it  gives  us  an  image  of  Eng- 
j  lish  life  in  the  fourteenth  century  of  unsurpassed  vividness.  If 
we  had  only  Chaucer  we  would  know  much  less ;  Chaucer  is  at  his 
best  when  describing  individuals;  his  portraits  are  priceless.  The 
author  of  Piers  Plowman  concerns  himself  especially  with  classes 
of  men,  great  political  movements,  the  general  aspirations  of  the 
people,  the  improvements  necessary  in  each  class  for  the  welfare 
of  the  nation.  Contemporary  events  and  the  lessons  to  be 
deducted  from  them,  the  hopes,  anxieties,  problems,  and  sufferings 
occupying  his  compatriots'  minds,  are  never  far  from  his  thoughts: 
plague,  storms,  French  wars,  question  of  labor  and  wages,  bishops 
becoming  royal  functionaries,  power  of  the  Commons  and  the 
king,  duties  of  the  nobles,  the  priests,  the  workmen.     He  does  not 

271]  1  [Modern  Philology,  January,  1909 

164310 


2  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

describe  them  simply  to  add  picturesque  touches,  but  to  express 
what  he  feels  and  show  how  the  nation  should  be  governed  and  be 
morally  improved.  He  is  not  above  his  time,  but  of  it;  he  is  not 
a  citizen  of  the  world,  but  a  thoroughgoing  Englishman  and 
nothing  else.  Alone  in  Europe,  and,  what  is  more  remarkable, 
alone  in  his  country,  he  gives  us  a  true  impression  of  the  grandeur 
of  the  internal  reform  that  had  been  going  on  in  England  during 
the  century:  the  establishment  on  a  firm  basis  of  that  institution, 
unique  then,  and  destined  to  be  imitated  throughout  the  world,  in 
both  hemispheres  five  hundred  years  later,  the  Westminster  Parlia- 
ment. The  equivalent  of  such  a  line  as  the  following  one  on  the 
power  of  king,  nobles,  and  Commons: 

Knyghthood  hym  ladde, 
Might  of  the  comunes"  made  hym  to  regne,1 

can  be  found  nowhere  in  the  whole  range  of  mediaeval  literature ; 
it  has  but  one  real  equivalent  (inaccessible  then  to  the  public), 
the  Rolls  of  Parliament. 

No  one  came  in  any  way  near  this  writer,  less  than  any  the 
great  man  who,  from  the  window  of  his  chamber  in  Aldgate 
tower,  cast  such  a  friendly  look  on  the  world,  such  a  true  citizen 
of  it  that,  although  he  had  taken  part  in  the  French  wars,  one 
could,  but  for  the  language,  read  his  whole  works  without  guess- 
ing on  which  side  he  had  fought.  Himself  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment,  he  who  described  so  many  men  of  so  many  sorts  has  not 
left  in  the  whole  series  of  his  works  a  line,  a  word,  allowing  his 
readers  to  suspect  the  magnitude  of  the  change  England  was 
undergoing ;  even  Froissart  gives  a  better  idea  of  it  than  he  does. 
His  franklin  he  describes  as  having  been  "fulofte  tyme"  a  "knight 
of  the  schire,"  and  instead  of  something  on  the  part  he  may  have 
played  then,  we  simply  get  thereupon  the  information  that 

An  anlas  and  a  gipser  al  of  silk 

Heng  at  his  gerdul,  whit  as  morne  mylk. 

Neither  of  these  two  great  authors  is  entirely  lacking  in  the 
qualities  of  the  other;  but  reading  Chaucer  we  know  better  what 
England  looked  like,  reading  Piers  Plowman  we  know  better 
what  she  felt,  suffered  from,  and  longed  for. 

1  B,  Prol.  112. 

272 


Piers  Plowman  3 

Deeply  concerned  with  the  grave  problems  confronting  his 
countrymen,  the  author  of  Piers  Plowman  seems  to  have  been  one 

of  those  writers,  not  a  unique  case  in  literature,  whose  life  find 
book  develop  together,  the  one  reflecting  necessarily  the  change 
that  years  and  circumstances  may  have  worked  in  the  other.  The 
life  and  the  book  of  such  men  as  Montaigne,  Rabelais,  Tasso, 
Cervantes,  especially  the  two  former,  may  be  quoted  as  offering 
parallelisms  of  the  same  order. 

The  Piers  Plowman  visions,  made  up  of  a  mixture  of  vague 
allegories  and  intensely  vivid  realities,  deal  with  three  principal 
episodes,  the  main  lines  of  which  the  author  seems  to  have  had  in 
his  mind  from  the  first,  the  episode  of  Meed,  the  episode  of  Piers 
Plowman,  and  the  search  for  Dowel,  Dobet,  Dobest.  Piers 
Plowman  reappears  in  the  last  episode;  he  is  the  most  important 
and  characteristic  personage  in  the  work,  hence  its  title.  The 
author,  who,  like  Montaigne  for  his  essays,  seems  to  have  been 
constantly  rewriting  his  poem,  gave,  as  is  well  known,  three  prin- 
cipal versions  of  it,  which  can  be  dated  from  the  historical  allusions 
in  them:  A,  1362-63;  B,  1376-77;  C,  1398-99. 

When  a  man  takes,  so  to  say,  for  his  life's  companion  and  con- 
fidant a  work  of  his,  adding  new  parts  or  new  thoughts  as  years 
pass  on,  and  as  events  put  their  impress  on  his  mind,  the  way  in 
which  these  remakings  are  carried  on  is  ever  the  same:  circum- 
stances command  them.  The  author  has  before  him  a  copy  of  his 
first  and  shortest  text,  and  he  makes  here  and  there,  as  it  occurs 
to  him,  an  emendation,  alters  a  word  or  a  passage  which  he  thinks 
he  can  improve,  or  which  no  longer  corresponds  to  his  way  of 
thinking ;  he  corrects  mistakes  and  occasionally  forgets  to  correct 
them,  he  develops  an  idea,  adds  examples  and  quotations,  and 
sometimes  new  passages,  clashing  with  others  written  years  before 
which  he  forgets  to  erase,  writes  a  continuation,  a  new  book,  a 
new  part.  The  emendations  or  additions  in  the  already  written 
text  are  crammed  into  the  margin  or  written  on  slips  or  fly-leaves. 
That  this  practice  was  in  use  in  the  Middle  Ages,  we  might  have 
surmised,  as  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  any  other;  but  we  know  in 
fact  that  it  was  so,  as  some  few  samples  of  manuscripts  of  this  sort 
have  come  down  to  us;  manuscripts  in  which  "the  author  has  made 

273 


4  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

corrections,  additions,  or  suppressions,  between  the  lines,  on  the 
margins,  and  sometimes  on  separate  sheets  or  fragments  of  vellum 
inserted  in  the  quire.  It  is  not  always  easy  to  see  where  those 
modifications  should  come  in."1 

Great  care  has  been,  indeed,  ever  necessary  to  prevent  mistakes 
in  such  cases;  they  have,  in  fact,  scarcely  ever  been  avoided. 
Glaring  ones  remain  in  works  of  this  sort,  of  whatever  epoch,  and 
which  we  know  to  have  been  revised  sometimes  by  the  authors 
themselves,  sometimes  by  their  trustiest  friends  after  their  death, 
and  at  periods,  too,  when  more  attention  was  paid  to  correct  texts 
and  logical  development  than  in  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets. 

A  famous  example  of  this  way  of  rewriting  a  book  is  that  of 
Montaigne,  whose  copy  of  his  own  essays,  prepared  in  view  of  one 
last  edition,  is  preserved  at  Bordeaux,  the  margins  covered  with 
scribbled  additions,2  other  additions  having  certainly  been  inscribed 
on  slips  or  fly-leaves  (now  lost),  as  they  are  to  be  found,  not 
always  at  their  proper  place,  in  the  undoubtedly  authentic  text 
published  soon  after  Montaigne's  death  by  those  devoted  friends 
and  admirers  of  his,  Pierre  de  Brach  and  Mile  de  Gournay. 

Superabundant  proofs  may  be  given  that  the  author  of  Piers 
Plowman  wrote  his  revisions  in  a  similar  way,  handing,  however,, 
to  less  careful  people  (professional  scribes)  material  requiring 
more  care,  with  some  slips,  fly-leaves,  afterthoughts,  and  marginal 
additions  difficult  to  place  at  the  proper  spot.  An  original  with 
all  the  leaves,  sheets,  and  slips  in  good  order  or  comparatively  so 
would  yield  comparatively  good  copies;  then,  by  some  accident, 
leaves  and  slips  would  get  mixed,  and  scribes  would  reproduce 
with  perfect  composure  this  jumble  of  incoherent  patches,  thus 
betraying  the  loose  and  scrappy  state  of  the  text  before  them,  and 
their  own  obtuseness.3     Tentative  additions,  written  by  the  author 

1  Letter  from  Mr.  Leopold  Delisle  to  the  author,  Chantilly,  August  3, 1908.  An  example 
of  a  MS  with  alterations  in  the  primitive  text  effected  by  means  of  slips  of  vellum  pasted  on 
certain  passages,  is  the  MS  Royal  14,  c,  vii,  in  the  British  Museum,  containing  the  Historia 
Anglorum  of  Matthew  Paris. 

*  A  facsimile  page  accompanies  P.  Bonnefon's  contribution  to  the  Histoire  de  la  lit- 
tirature  francaise  of  P.  de  Julleville,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  466. 

3  A  striking  examplo  is  that  offered  by  two  important  MSS  of  A,  one  at  University  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and  the  Rawlinson  Poet.  137,  at  the  Bodleian.  Both  were  copied  from  the  same 
original  which  offered  a  good  text,  but  the  leaves  or  slips  wherewith  it  was  made  had  got 
disarranged  and  had  been  put  together  in  wrong  order.    Both  scribes  carefully  reproduced 

274 


Piers  Plowman  5 

on  the  margin  or  on  scraps,  to  be  later  definitively  admitted  or  not 
into  the  text,  were  inserted  haphazard  anywhere  by  some  copyists 
and  let  alone  by  others.'  In  his  next  revision  the  poet  never 
failed  to  remove  a  number  of  errors  left  in  the  previous  text, 
always,  however,  forgetting  a  few. 

As  shown  by  the  condition  of  MSS,  the  poet  let  copyists  tran- 
scribe his  work  at  various  moments,  when  it  was  in  the  making 
(it  was  indeed  ever  in  the  making),  and  was  in  a  far  from  complete 
and  perfect  state ;  sometimes  when  part  or  the  whole  of  an  episode 
was  lacking,  or  when  it  ended  with  a  canto  or  passus  merely 
sketched  and  left  unfinished.2  The  scribes  who  copied  the  MS 
Harl.  875  and  the  Lincoln's  Inn  MS  had  apparently  before  them 
an  original  of  version  A,  containing  only  the  first  eight  passus, 
that  is,  the  episodes  of  Meed  and  Piers.  Almost  all  the  other  MSS 
of  A  have  eleven  passus  and  contain  the  story  of  Meed,  Piers,  and 

tho  same  jumble  of  incoherent  parts.  The  University  College  MS  "  is  regular  down  to  passus 
II,  25,  which  is  immediately  followed  (on  the  same  page)  by  passus  VII,  71-213,  and  then 
returns  to  1.  132  of  passus  I,  the  last  four  lines  of  passus  I  and  some  twenty  lines  of  passus 
II  occurring  twice  over.  It  then  goes  down  to  passus  VII,  70,  when  the  passage  which  had 
already  occurred  is  omitted."  In  the  other  MS :  "  the  text  is  in  precisely  the  same  wrong 
order,"  says  Skeat  in  the  Preface  of  A,  pp.  xx  and  143*  (Early  Engl.  Text  Soc).  Other 
examples  might  be  quoted.  In  the  MS  Cotton,  Vespasian  B,  XVI,  in  the  British  Museum, 
containing  a  text  of  C,  "written  before  1400,"  and  therefore  contemporary  with  the  author, 
passus  XVIII  was  copied  from  separate  sheets  or  scraps  which  had  also  got  mixed,  so  that 
after  XVIII,  186,  comes  XVIII,  288,  "then  comes  XVIII,  187 ;  then  XVIII,  259-287 ;  then  XVIII, 
188-258,  after  which  comes  XVIII,  289,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  passus."— Skeat,  Preface  of  C, 
p.  xl. 

i  Of  this  sort  are,  to  all  appearances,  the  additional  lines  in  the  MS  Harl.  875  of  A,  not  to  be 
found  elsewhere,  especially  the  two  passages  giving,  as  in  a  parenthesis,  some  supplementary 
touches,  on  Fals  and  on  Favel,  one  of  four  and  the  other  of  three  lines  (II,  136, 141).  In  the 
MS  of  C,  belonging  to  the  Earl  of  Ilchester,  a  passage  (X,  75-281,  Skeat,  Preface  of  C, 
p.  xxxiv)  is  twice  repeated  with  considerable  differences,  one  of  the  two  versions  being,  it 
seems,  a  first  cast  of  the  other.  Finding  both  in  the  copy  before  him,  the  scribe  quietly 
transcribed  the  two. 

Another  remarkable  example  is  the  one  to  which  Professor  Manly  drew  attention :  The 
four  or  five  lines  added  at  the  moment  when  Piers  Plowman  is  about  to  make  his  will,  and 
giving  the  names  of  his  wife  and  children  (A,  VII,  70).  They  had  obviously  been  written 
apart  on  the  margin  or  on  a  slip,  to  be  inserted  later  and  be  duly  connected  with  the  bulk 
of  the  text.  The  copyists  inserted  them  as  they  were,  at  the  place  opposite  which  they  found 
them,  and  so  they  form  a  crude  and  strange  parenthesis.  The  scribes  wrote  them,  however, 
precisely  as  a  sort  of  parenthesis,  which  was  showing  more  intelligence  than  in  some  other 
cases;  the  sign  indicating  a  new  paragraph  usually  precedes  them  ;  such  is  the  case  in  the 
excellent  MS  Laud  581,  fol.27.  The  additional  MS  35,  287,  fol.  296,  not  only  has  the  same 
sign,  but  a  blank  precedes  these  lines,  so  as  to  show  that  they  are  really  something  apart. 

2  MS  Rawlinson  Poet.  38,  in  the  Bodleian,  is,  as  Mr.  Skeat  has  pointed  out  (preface  of 
B,  p.  xii,  E.  E.  T.  S.),  a  copy  of  the  B  text  with  some  additions  and  afterthoughts  (about  one 
hundred  and  sixty  lines  in  all),  destined  to  be  incorporated  later,  with  a  large  quantity  of 
others,  in  the  C  text.  It  represents,  therefore,  one  more  state  in  which  the  work  was  allowed 
by  the  author  to  be  copied.  It  seems  scarcely  probable  that  an  independent  reviser  should 
have  revised  so  little  and  allowed  the  work  to  be  copied  after  such  slight  changes. 

275 


6  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

part  of  Dowel.  Two,  however,  give  us  a  fragment,  and  a  third, 
what  purports  to  be  the  whole  of  a  twelfth  passus,1  a  mere  sketch 
anyhow,  almost  entirely  discarded  in  subsequent  revisions.  It  does 
not  in  any  case  end  the  story  of  Dowel;  much  less  does  it  give 
what  the  beginning  of  the  episode  had  led  us  to  expect  concern- 
ing Dobet  and  Dobest.  Of  these  two  we  were  to  hear  only  in 
the  B  and  C  texts,  written  later,  which  were  also  allowed  to 
be  copied  before  they  were  finished;  they  were,  indeed,  never 
finished  at  all.  Both  contain,  besides  the  Meed  and  the  Plowman 
episodes,  seven  passus  on  Dowel,  four  on  Dobet,  and  only  two  on 
Dobest.  That  the  author  did  not  intend  to  end  there  is  shown,  not 
only  because  it  does  not  really  end  (in  allegorical  matters,  it  is  true, 
one  may  end  almost  anywhere),  not  only  on  account  of  the  abnormal 
brevity  of  the  Dobest  part,  but  also  because,  in  the  Bodleian  MS 
Laud  656  of  the  C  text,  one  of  the  best  and  most  trustworthy, 
after  the  conclusion  of  the  second  and  last  de  facto  passus  on 
Dobest,  occur  the  words:  "Explicit  passus  secundus  de  dobest  et 
incipit  passus  tercius."  These  words  do  not  seem  to  have  been 
added,  as  Mr.  Skeat  suggests,  by  mistake,  but  because  the  copyist 
read  them  in  his  original.  That  a  continuation  was  really  expected 
is  shown  by  the  blank  pages  left  for  it:  the  leaf  on  which  this 
note  appears,  as  well  as  the  three  following  ones  (somewhat  dam- 
aged by  somebody  who  wanted  bits  of  vellum  and  cut  off  some 
strips),  remain  blank  in  the  MS,  and  these  leaves  belong,  as  I 
have  recently  verified,  to  the  quire  on  which  the  Visions  are 
written,  not  to  the  work  coming  next  in  the  book. 

Works  of  the  Piers  Plowman  type  are  rarely  finished.  The 
life  of  men  who  take  their  book  for  their  confidant  comes  to  an  end 
before  their  book  does.  The  English  dreamer  no  more  finished 
his  Piers  Plowman  than  Montaigne  his  Essays,  or  Rabelais  his 
Gargantna.  But  while  the  author  allowed  incomplete  texts  to 
go  about,  there  is  no  doubt  that  each  successive  episode  was  in 

iThe  MS  of  version  A  at  University  College,  Oxford,  has  18  lines  of  this  twelfth  passus; 
the  Ingilby  MS  has  88  lines  and  there  stops  short,  the  state  of  the  MS  showing,  according  to 
Skeat  {Parallel  Extracts  of  45  MSS;  Early  Engl.  Text  Soc,  p.  29),  that  the  scribe  had  no 
more  to  copy.  The  MS  Eawlinson  Poet.  137,  at  the  Bodleian,  contains  what  purports  to  be 
the  whole  passus,  but  as,  in  this  case  also,  the  original  MS  did  not  supply  a  complete  text, 
a  man  called  John  But,  of  whom  more  hereafter,  took  upon  himself  to  add  to  it  a  sensa- 
tional ending  of  his  invention. 

276 


Piers  Plowman  7 

his  mind  when  he  laid  down  his  pen  after  having  finished  the 
foregoing  one,  which  shows  sameness  and  continuity  of  purpose. 
For  the  two  first,  Meed  and  Piers,  though  more  loosely  connected 
than  the  rest,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  as  they  were  written  together 
in  the  same  mood  and  style,  and  made  public  together;  there  is 
no  copy  where  they  appear  separate.  For  the  last  episode,  a 
tripartite  one,  dealing  with  Dowel,  Dobet,  and  Dobest,  the  con- 
nection with  the  previous  ones  is  established  by  the  last  part  of  the 
last  passus  (VIII)  concerning  Piers,  where  the  author  represents 
himself  pondering  about  Dowel  and  the  necessity  of  securing  his 
help:  pardons,  Pope's  bulls,  triennals  will  be  no  good,  "bote 
Dowel  the  helpe;"  may  we  so  behave,  "er  we  gon  hennes,"  that 
we  may  claim  then,  "we  duden  as  he  (Dowel)  us  hrjte."1  That 
the  Dowel  episode  would  come  next,  if  anything  came,  is  thus 
made  obvious ;  that  it  would  be  a  tripartite  one  is  shown  from  the 
beginning  of  this  new  part:  (1)  MSS  of  the  A  text  have  there  such 
a  heading  as,  "Incipit  hie  Dowel,  Dobet,  et  Dobest,"  making  clear 
what  was  the  ultimate  purpose  of  the  author,  though  as  a  matter 
of  fact  Dowel  alone,  and  only  in  part,  was  yet  written;  (2)  The 
text  itself  of  the  first  passus  concerning  Dowel  also  forecasts  the 
treble  account  which  was  to  be  given  only  years  later,  in  versions 
B  and  C,  but  was,  even  so  early  as  1362,  in  the  author's  mind. 
In  the  very  first  passus  concerning  Dowel  (ninth  of  the  whole 
work)  Thought  calls  the  dreamer's  attention  to  those  three  beings, 
those  three  steps  toward  perfection: 

"Dowel,"  quod  he,  "and  Dobet"  and  Dobest  pe  pridde 
Beop  preo  faire  vertues"  and  beop  not  fer  to  fynde."2 

That  these  three  versions  of  the  Piers  Plowman  poem  exist  is 
certain;  that  they  were  written  by  someone  cannot  be  considered 
a  rash  surmise.  Of  that  one  we  know  little;  but  that  little  is  con- 
siderably better  than  nothing;  better  than  in  the  case  of  more 
than  one  mediaeval  work  of  value,  Morte  a" Arthur,  for  example, 
Gawayne  and  the  Green  Knight,  or  Pearl,  in  which  cases  we  are 
reduced  to  mere  suppositions. 

For  Piers  Plowman,  we  have  what  the  manuscripts  tell  us  in 
their  titles,  colophons,  or  marginal  notes;  what  the  author  tells  us 

•  A,  VIII,  187.  2  A,  IX,  69. 

277 


8  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

himself  in  his  verses;  and  what  tradition  has  to  say,  being  repre- 
sented by  one  man  at  least  whose  testimony  is  of  real  weight. 

Without  exception,  all  those  titles,  colophons,  marginal  notes, 
and  testimonies  agree  in  pointing  to  the  succession  of  visions, 
forming,  at  first,  8  or  12,  and  lastly  23  passus,  as  being  one  work, 
having  for  its  general  title  Piers  Plowman,  and  written  by  one 
author.  MSS  containing  the  three  episodes  of  Meed,  Piers  Plow- 
man properly  so  called,  and  Dowel,  begin  thus:  "Hie  incipit  liber 
qui  vocatur  pers  plowman;"1  and  end  thus:  "Explicit  tractatus 
de  perys  plowman."2  The  continuity  of  the  work  is  also  shown 
by  the  numeration  of  the  passus  in  several  MSS ;  the  MS  Add. 
35,287,  for  example,  of  text  B,  where  we  are  told,  at  the  end  of 
the  Piers  Plowman  episode,  that  the  new  passus  now  beginning 
is,  at  the  same  time,  the  first  of  Dowel  and  the  eighth  of  the  total 
work;3  when  we  have  had  not  only  Dowel,  but  Dobet  and  Dobest, 
occurs  then  the  colophon:  "Explicit  hie  Dialogus  petri  plowman." 
The  excellent  MS  Laud  581,  also  of  text  B,  at  the  Bodleian,  has 
the  same  way  of  counting  the  passus:  "Passus  octavus  de  visione 
et  primus  de  dowel Passus  xvj135,  et  primus  de  dobet."4 

The  manuscripts  thus  connect  together  the  several  parts  of  the 
poem,  showing  that  one  whole  work,  under  the  general  title  of 
Piers  Plowman,  is  in  question.  In  the  same  fashion,  all  the  notes 
found  on  their  leaves,  the  allusion  in  the  work,  and  tradition, 
attribute  the  poem  to  one  single  author. 

Some  of  these  notes  vary  as  to  the  name  or  the  form  of  the 
name  or  surname;  not  one  implies  more  than  one  author  for  the 
whole.  At  the  end  of  the  Piers  Plowman  episode  properly  so 
called,  three  MSS  have  the  note:  "Explicit  visio  Willelmi  W.  de 
petro  Plowman.  Et  hie  incipit  visio  ejusdem  de  Dowel."5  Three 
MSS  assert  therefore,  in  express  fashion,  that  Dowel  and  the  rest 
are  by  the  same  author.      The  more  probable  name  and  surname 

1  MS  Rawlinson  Poet.  137,  in  the  Bodleian,  a  text  of  A,  the  only  one  with  John  But's 
addition,  dating  from  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

2  MS  Harl.  3954,  ab.  1420  (Skeat),  containing  11  passus,  and  being  a  mixture  of  the  A  and 
and  B  versions. 

3Fol.  36.    This  MS,  now  in  the  British  Museum,  was  formerly  the  MS  Ashburnham 

CXXIX. 

*Fol.  33a and  62a,"  same  colophon:  "Explicit  hie  dialogus  petri  plowman." 

5(1)  An  early  MS  belonging  to  the  Earl  of  Ilchester;    (2)  the  MS  Douce  104,  in  the 

Bodleian  Library,  dated  1427;   (3)  the  MS    Digby  102,  same  library,  middle  of   fifteenth 

278 


Piers  Plowman  9 

for  our  author  are  William  Langland  (or  Longlond).     The  name 
William  occurs  in  a  number  of  places  and  cannot  be  doubted: 

"Incipit    visio    Willelmi  ....  Explicit   visio    Willelmi 

A  lovely  lady  calde  me  by  name  —  And   seide,    'Wille,    slepest 
thow?'  ...."' 

"What  art  thow?"  quath  ich*  "that  my  name  knowest?" 
"That  wost  thow,  Wille,"  quath  he"  "and  no  wight  betere."2 

The  surname  Langland  (Longlond)  is  to  be  found  in  full  in  a 
punning  line  of  the  B  text,  the  syllables  being  arranged  in  a 
reversed  order: 

I  have  lyved  in  londe,  quod  I'     My  name  is  longe  Wille? 

If  we  discarded  the  punning  intention,  the  line  would  have 
little  enough  meaning:  to  "live  in  land"  does  not  convey  any 
very  clear  idea ;  so  little  indeed,  that  when  revising  his  text  for  the 
third  time,  and  choosing  not  to  repeat  his  confidence,  the  author 
not  only  suppressed  the  "longe  Wille,"  but  also  the  "lived  in 
londe,"  which  left  alone  would  have,  to  be  sure,  betrayed  nothing, 
but  would  have  been  simply  meaningless.     He  wrote: 

Ich  have  lived  in  London*  meny  longe  geres.4 

That  the  line  was  of  interest  as  giving  the  author's  name  was 
not  noticed  only  by  the  critics  of  today;  it  drew  attention  from 
the  first.  In  the  margin  of  the  MS  Laud  581,  opposite  the  bef ore- 
century,  all  three  containing  the  C  text.  See  Skeat's  edition  (E.  E.  T.  S.)  of  C,  pp.  xxxvii, 
xlv,  xlvi.  The  word  represented  by  an  initial  ( W. ) ,  an  abbreviation  habitually  recalling  the 
place  of  birth  or  origin,  has  been  hypothetically,  and  with  no  certitude,  interpreted  as  mean- 
ing "  Wigorniensis  "  (Skeat)  or  "of  Wychwood  "  (Pearson). 

i  C,  II,  5.  2  c,  XI,  71.  3  B,  XV,  148. 

iC,  XVII,  286.  To  give  one's  name,  or  someone  else's,  in  a  more  or  less  enigmatical 
fashion  was  quite  customary  in  Langland's  day.  Mr.  Skeat  has  been  the  first  to  show  that 
when  he  spoke  of  the  "the  wikked  Nest"  (Monk's  Tale),  Chaucer  meant  Olivier  de  Mauni, 
whose  name  he  simply  translated.  I  have  quoted  the  example  of  Christine  de  Pisan  in  my 
Piers  Plowman.    Another  example  is  Gower,  who  wrote : 

Primos  sume  pedes  Godefredi  desque  Johanni, 

Principiumque  sui  Wallia  jungat  eis 
Ter  caput  amittens  det  cetera  membra. 

—  Vox  Clamantis,  Prol.  to  Book  I. 
Langland  seems  to  have  considered  that  some  inconvenience  might  result  from  his  hav- 
ing said  so  much,  and  he  suppressed  in  text  C,  as  said  above,  his  veiled  confidence. 

279 


10  J.    J-    JUSSERAND 

quoted  verse,  occur  the  words  in  fifteenth-century  handwriting: 
"Nota  the  name  of  thauct[our]."]  The  carefully  written  MS 
Additional  35,287,  which  has  been  revised  by  a  contemporary 
corrector,  supplies  very  important  evidence.  The  rule  followed 
in  it  is  that  Latin  words  or  names  of  real  personages  are  written 
in  large  letters  and  underlined  in  red,  and  the  names  of  imagi- 
nary beings  are  not  distinguished  in  any  way  from  the  rest  of  the 
text.  Thus  the  names  of  Meed,  Holy  Church,  Robert  the  Robber, 
etc.,  are  written  like  any  other  word.  But  the  names  of  Samson, 
Samuel,  Seneca,  Kings  Edmund  and  Edward  are  underlined  in 
red.  The  name  of  "Longe  Wille"  is  underlined  in  red  and  writ- 
ten in  larger  letters  than  the  rest  of  the  line,  thus  taking  rank  in 
those  of  real  and  not  of  imaginary  beings. 

Various  notes  and  more  or  less  detailed  statements  inscribed 
on  several  MSS  are  to  the  same  effect.  In  the  MS  Ashburnham 
CXXX  appear,  inside  the  cover,  in  a  handwriting  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  the  words,  "Robert  or  William  Langland  made  pers 
ploughman."2  In  the  Dublin  MS  occurs  the  well-known  state- 
ment, also  written  in  the  fifteenth  century:  "Memorandum  quod 
Stacy  de  Rokayle,  pater  Willielmi  de  Langlond  ....  qui  prae- 
dictus  Willielmus  fecit  librum  qui  vocatur  Perys  Ploughman." 
John  Bale,  later,  who  took  so  much  trouble,  in  the  course  of  his 
"laboryouse  journeys,"  to  gather  all  available  information  con- 
cerning old  English  writers,  inserted  in  his  Catalogue  a  somewhat 
detailed  notice  which,  if  it  contains  some  doubtful  assertions  (he 
himself  states  that  several  points  are  indeed  doubtful),  is  certainly 
the  result  of  personal  investigations.  He  asserts  once  more  that 
Piers  Plowman  is  the  work  of  one  poet,  called  "Langland."  Not 
content  with  printing  his  statement  in  his  Latin  Catalogue,  he 
repeated  it,  in  an  abbreviated  form,  on  the  cover  of  one  of  the  MSS 
he  handled,  namely  the  before-quoted  Ashburnham  MS  CXXX  of 
the  B  text:  "Robertus  Langlande,  natus  in  comitatu  Salopie  in 
villa  Mortimeris  Clybery  in  the  Clayland  and  within  viij  miles  of 
Malvern  hills,  scripsit  piers  ploughman."3 

1  Fol.  64a. 

2Skeat,  B,  Preface,  p.  xxii  (E.  E.  T.  S.). 

3Skeat,  A,  Preface,  p.  xxxv  (E.  E.  T.  S.). 

280 


Piers  Plowman  11 

Unity  of  the  work,  condition  of  the  MSS,  allusions  in  the  text 
or  out  of  it,  marginal  notes,  tradition  concerning  both  work  and 
author  agree  well  together.  From  the  first,  the  poem  has  been 
held  to  consist  of  a  succession  of  visions  forming  one  single  poem, 
as  the  Canterbury  Tales,  composed  of  a  succession  of  tales,  are 
only  one  work;  and  to  have  been  written  by  one  single  author, 
called  William  or  Robert  (in  fact  certainly  William)  Langland 
An  attempt  has  recently  been  made  to  upset  all  that  has  been 
accepted  thereon  up  to  now. 

II 

During  the  last  few  years,  Professor  Manly  has  devoted  his 
time  and  thoughts  to  Piers  Ploivman,  not  without  notable  effect. 
In  two  essays  of  great  value  he  has  made  known  the  result  of  his 
studies  and  the  inferences  he  thinks  he  can  draw  from  what  he 
has  discovered. 

His  main  and  most  interesting  discovery,  one  which  entitles 
him  to  the  gratitude  of  every  lover  of  mediaeval  literature,  con- 
sists in  his  having  pointed  out  that  a  passage  in  the  three  versions 
had  been  misplaced  in  every  MS  and  consequently  in  every  edi- 
tion, making  complete  nonsense  where  it  was,  while  it  would  make 
sense  elsewhere.  Scribes,  correctors,  readers,  editors,  printers, 
and  critics  innumerable  had  seen  the  passage  for  five  hundred 
years  without  noticing  anything  strange  about  it.  Mr.  Manly 
saw  what  nobody  had  seen,  and  the  moment  he  spoke  everybody 
agreed  with  him.  Even  if,  in  the  end,  the  theories  he  thereupon 
put  forth  are  not  admitted,  his  merit  will  ever  be  that  of  the 
inventor;  that  of  others,  at  best,  the  merit  of  the  improver.  There 
are  several  sorts  of  discoverers;  Professor  Manly  belongs  to  the 
best  and  rarest,  being  one  of  those  whose  courtesy  equals  their 
learning  and  dialectical  cleverness. 

The  discovery  and  theories  of  Professor  Manly  form  the  sub- 
ject of  two  essays  by  him,  one  in  Modern  Philology,  January,  1906, 
called  "The  Lost  Leaf  of  Piers  the  Plowman,"  the  other  being  the 
chapter  on  "Piers  the  Plowman  and  Its  Sequence,"  in  the  Cam- 
bridge History  of  English  Literature,  Vol.  II,  1908. 

Combining  what  he  had  discovered  with  the  impressions  derived 

281 


12  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

from  a  careful  reading  of  the  three  texts  in  succession,  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  Piers  Plowman  "is  really  the  work  of  five 
different  men,"  to  the  critics'  imagination  being  due  "the  crea 
tion  of  a  mythical  author  of  all  these  poems."1 

It  may  be,  I  think,  in  the  interest  of  all  to  get  rid  at  once  of 
one  of  these  five,  and  reduce  the  number  to  four.  Even  so 
reduced  Professor  Manly's  theory,  as  will  be  seen,  will  prove  hard 
enough  to  sustain.  To  admit  John  But  to  the  honor  of  being  one 
of  the  authors  of  the  poem  is  indeed  going  too  far.  At  the  time 
when  Richard  II  was  "kyng  of  pis  rewme,"  a  copy  of  version  A 
came  to  the  hands  of  a  silly  scribbler  who,  as  he  says,  "meddled 
of  makyng."  Finding  the  poem  unfinished,  and  unaware  of  much 
more  having  been  composed  and  made  public  since  (for  version 
B,  at  least,  was  then  in  existence),  he  added  a  senseless  ending  of 
his  own,  volunteering  the  information  that  Death  had  killed  the 
author,  now  "closed  under  clom."  He  was  so  good  as  to  give  his 
name,  so  that  we  know  for  sure,  on  his  own  testimony,  that  "  Johan 
But"  was  a  fool.2 

This  spurious  ending,  preserved  in  only  one  MS  and  of  which 
no  trace  is  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  continuations  of  the  poem,  no 
more  entitles  John  But  to  the  dignity  of  co-author,  than  do  the 
lines  added  by  scribes  to  make  known  their  thirst,  and  their  joy 
at  having  finished  copying  Piers  Plowman: 

Now  of  Hs  litel  book  y  have  makyd  an  ende, 

Goddis  blessyng  mote  he  have  fat  drinke  wil  me  sende.3 

Let  us  therefore  speak  only  of  the  four  remaining  authors,  not 
an  insignificant  number,  whose  contribution  to  the  total  work  is 
thus  divided  by  Mr.  Manly:  Author  I  wrote  passus  I-VIII  of  A, 
containing  the  Meed  and  Piers  Plowman  episodes ;  Author  II  wrote 
the   fragment  on   Dowel   occurring   in   various  MSS   of   A;    to 

1  Cambridge  History,  II,  p.  1. 

2  The  passage  on  Death  having  killed  the  author  seems  to  me,  as  to  Professor  Manly, 
to  be  the  product  of  But's  brain  (so  to  speak).  In  his  Oxford  edition  Mr.  Skeat  suppresses 
as  spurious  only  the  twelve  last  lines,  from  "And  so  bad  Iohan  But,"  etc.,  and  in  his 
E.  E.  T.  S.  edition  he  leaves  a  blank  between  these  lines  and  the  rest.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
there  is  no  blank  in  the  MS,  nor  anything  to  distinguish  these  lines  from  what  went  before. 

3  MS  Douce  323  (A  text). 

282 


Piers  Plowman  13 

Author  III  are  clue  the  emendations  and  additions  in  text  B;  to 
Author  IV  the  emendations  and  additions  in  text  C. 

Before  studying  the  reasons  alleged  in  support  of  this  thesis,  it 
may  be  observed  that,  to  carry  conviction,  they  must  be  very 
strong,  not  only  because,  as  pointed  out  above,  the  spirit  pervad- 
ing Piers  Plowman  is  not  to  be  found  anywhere  else,  and  if  four 
poets  instead  of  one  were  imbued  with  it  (the  four  being  besides 
of  great  merit),  it  is  singular  that  they  all  chose  to  manifest  it  by 
anonymous  additions  to  the  work  of  someone  else,  the  same  work 
in  each  case;  not  only  because  all  testimonies  and  notes  in  the 
MSS  contradict  this  theory;  not  only  because,  if  the  shadowy 
character  of  one  author  unseen,  unmet  by  any  contemporary,  is 
strange,  the  same  happening  for  four  people  concerned  with  the 
same  problems  would  be  a  wonder;  but  also  because  to  suppose 
four  authors  adding  new  parts  to  a  poem  and  freely  remodeling  the 
old  ones,  is  to  suppose  also  that,  as  soon  as  Author  I  had  finished 
writing,  he  would  have  died  to  leave  room  for  Author  II  who,  in 
his  turn,  must  have  written  and  died;  as  must  have  done  Author 
III  to  make  room  for  Author  IV.  If  Author  I,  II,  or  III  had 
survived,  they  would  have  protested  against  the  intrusion;  or,  at 
least,  one  or  several  among  them  would  have  written  a  continua- 
tion of  his  own  (the  ever-unfinished  poem  certainly  wanted  one), 
so  that  if  he  had  been  unable  to  prevent  interpolations  or  spurious 
continuations,  he  would  have  given  his  actual  views.  But  we  have 
no  trace  of  such  a  thing.  There  are  many  manuscripts,  yet  they 
give  us  only  one  text  for  each  continuation.  This  is  the  more 
remarkable  as,  if  we  admit  of  Professor  Manly's  own  strictures,  the 
intrusion  of  each  successive  author  must  have  been  very  galling 
to  the  previous  ones.  Mr.  Manly  brings  forth  a  number  of  proofs 
demonstrating,  as  he  considers,  that  the  work  was  actually  spoilt 
in  many  places  by  these  subsequent  contributors,  that  Author  II 
tried  to  imitate  the  style  of  Author  I  but  failed;  that  Author  III 
misunderstood,  in  a  number  of  passages,  the  meaning  of  his  fore- 
runners, making  nonsense  of  them  all,  and  that  Author  IV  did 
the  same  with  Author  III.  No  explanation  is  indeed  possible, 
except  that  each  of  these  authors  must  have  written  and  breathed 
his  last,  with  absolute  punctuality,  as  moths  lay  their  eggs,  gasp, 

283 


14  J.    J.    JUSSEKAND 

and  die.1  A  very  strange,  not  to  say  improbable  case.  What  are 
the  proofs? 

They  are  of  three  different  sorts:  (1)  The  shuffled  leaf  or  mis- 
placed passage;  (2)  Authors  III  and  IV  did  not  understand 
what  their  forerunners  meant  and  must,  therefore,  be  different 
people;  (3)  the  differences  of  moods,  feelings,  ways  of  speaking, 
literary  merit,  meter,  and  dialect  are  such  between  the  different 
parts  or  successive  revisions,  as  to  denote  four  different  authors. 

The  main  effort  of  Mr.  Manly  bearing  on  the  demonstration 
that  the  author  of  version  B  cannot  be  the  same  as  the  author  or 
authors  of  version  A,  and  this  discovery  concerning  the  shifted 
passage  being  one  of  his  most  striking  arguments,  we  shall  con- 
sider this  question  first. 

Ill 

Having  narrated,  in  the  earliest  version  of  the  poem,  the  story 
of  Meed,  a  story  with  no  end  to  it,  as  is  the  case  with  all  his 
stories,  the  author  begins  to  tell  his  beads,  and  this,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  he  seems  to  imply,  puts  him  to  sleep: 

And  so  I  blaberde  on  my  beodes*  t>at  brouhte  me  a-sleepe.2 

He  has  a  new  vision,  as  slightly  connected  as  can  be  with  the 
foregoing  one.  Conscience  delivers  a  sermon  and  Repentance 
advises  sinners  to  repent.  "William"  himself  repents  first, 
dropping  "watur  with  his  e^en;"  then  "Pernel  proud-herte" 
does  the  same.  Beginning  with  Pernel,  who  represents  Pride,  we 
have  then  a  confession  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  sometimes  per- 
sonified by  real  beings,  sometimes  remaining  sheer  abstractions. 
Some  of  the  portraits  are  drawn  with  admirable  care  and  vividness ; 
others  are  mere  sketches  so  perfunctory  and  inadequate  as  to 
seem  rather  memoranda  to  be  developed  later  and  put  there  simply 
for  the  name  to  appear  in  the  list.  "Lechour,"  for  example,  whose 
misdeeds  the  author  at  other  places,  in  the  same  version,  is  not 
loath  to  describe  in  language  no  less  crude  than  picturesque,  gets 

1  It  may  also  be  observed  that  if  it  frequently  occurs  that  an  author  leaves  a  work  of 
his  unfinished,  the  case  is  rarer  with  a  continuator ;  it  is  usually  in  view  of  completing  what 
is  unfinished  that  a  continuator  sets  to  work.  It  took  time  and  space  for  Jean  de  Meung  to 
finis! i  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  but  he  finished  it. 

2  A,  V.  8. 

284 


Piers  Plowman  15 

only  five  lines  —  a  simple  memorandum  to  be  improved  afterward; 
as  was  indeed  indispensable,  for  not  only  are  details  lacking,  but 
the  few  that  are  given  are  scarcely  appropriate.  There  is  no 
confession  at  all;  Lechour  asks  mercy  for  his  "misdeeds,"  and 
promises  that,  for  seven  years,  on  Saturdays,  he  will  have  only 
one  meal  and  will  drink  only  water.  If  the  privation  he  mentions 
is  the  only  one  he  means  to  inflict  on  himself,  it  leaves  him  a 
margin  for  many  sins,  and  especially  his  favorite  one.  Others, 
such  as  Envy  (44  lines),  Ooveitise  (39),  and  Gloton  (76),  are  as 
full  of  life  as  the  best  passages  in  Chaucer  himself. 

Sloth,  who  comes  last,  has  14  lines,  nearer  the  Lechour  than  the 
Gloton  type;  he  is  sorry  for  his  nondescript  "sunnes,"  and 
promises  that,  for  seven  years,  he  will  not  fail  to  hear  mass  and 
matins  on  Sundays,  and  no  "ale  after  mete"  will  keep  him  from 
church  in  the  evening,  which,  if  admissible,  is  not  strikingly  fitting. 
This  said,  a  continuation  follows,  the  inappropriateness  of  which, 
after  so  many  centuries,  Mr.  Manly  was  the  first  to  point  out. 

Immediately  after  Sloth's  solemn  promise  "to  pe  Rode," 
which,  in  the  usual  course,  should  conclude  his  speech,  come  twenty- 
four  utterly  irrelevant  lines:  "And  ^it,"  Sloth  is  supposed  to 
continue  saying: 

And  git  I-chulle  ^elden  a5eyn'   5if  I  so  muche  have 
Al  pat  I  wickkedliche  won"  sePFe  I  wit  hade,  etc.1 

The  passage  deals  with  the  moral  obligation  for  robbers  and 
dishonest  people  to  make  restitution.  A  real  being — such  as 
others  in  the  course  of  these  confessions,  like  "  Pernel  proud-herte," 
or  Gloton — Robert  the  Robber,  is  then  introduced,  weeping  for  his 
sins,  wanting  to  make  restitution,  and  in  despair  because  he  has  not 
the  wherewithal.  These  24  verses  are  certainly  out  of  place ;  some 
mistake  of  the  scribe,  to  whom  was  due  the  original  copy  which 
all  the  others  transcribed,  must  have  caused  the  mischief,  for  all 
the  MSS  of  A,  without  exception,  offer  this  same  inacceptable 
arrangement. 

Here  comes  Mr.  Manly's  important  deduction:  this  same 
unacceptable  arrangement  was  accepted  by  the  author  of  version  B. 

1A,  V,  236. 

285 


16  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

He  had  certainly  before  hirci,  when  he  set  to  .work,  a  copy  of  A; 
and  while  he  introduced  in  it  innumerable  alterations  and  additions, 
he  left  this  passage  at  the  same  wrong  place.  He  could  never 
have  failed  to  notice  the  mistake  if  he  had  really  been  the  author 
of  A;  as  he  did  not,  he  was  not. 

And  there  is  more  than  that.  The  very  way  in  which  he  tried 
to  get  out  of  difficulty  shows  that  he  was  not  the  same  man.  He 
noticed  that  there  was  something  unsatisfactory  about  the  passage: 
what  has  Sloth  to  do  with  restitution?  He  also  noticed  the 
singular  fact  that,  for  some  unexplained  reason,  in  this  confession 
of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  only  six  appear,  Wrath  being  forgotten. 
What  he  did,  thereupon,  betrayed  as  much  as  anything  else,  accord- 
ing to  Professor  Manly,  the  dualism  of  authorship: 

The  omission  of  Wrath  and  the  confusion  as  to  Sloth  were  noticed 
by  B,  and  he  treated  them  rather  ingeniously.  He  introduced  into  the 
earlier  part  of  Sloth's  confession  a  declaration  that  he  had  been  so  sloth- 
ful as  to  withhold  the  wages  of  his  servants  and  to  forget  to  return  things 
he  had  borrowed.  To  supply  a  confession  of  Wrath,  he  himself  wrote  a 
Confessio  Irae,  totally  different  in  style  from  the  work  of  A,  and,  indeed, 
more  appropriate  for  Envy  than  for  Wrath,  containing  as  it  does  no  very 
distinctive  traits  of  Wrath.1 

These  assertions,  which  we  shall  take  up  one  by  one,  are  supple- 
mented by  an  explanation  of  what,  in  the  opinion  of  Professor 
Manly,  must  have  taken  place.  According  to  him,  the  author  of  the 
first  part  of  A,  the  best-gifted  and  cleverest  of  all,  cannot  have 
forgotten  Wrath  and  must  have  devoted  to  it  a  leaf  which  was 
accidentally  lost;  the  same  author  must  have  put  the  passage 
concerning  Robert  the  Robber  where  it  actually  stands;  but, 
between  the  beginning  of  this  passage  and  the  end  of  Sloth,  must 
have  occurred,  on  a  leaf  also  lost,  lines  serving  as  a  transition  from 
Sloth  to  Robert,  lines  numerous  enough  ''for  the  development  of 
the  confession  of  Robert  ....  and  also  for  the  less  abrupt  ending 
of  the  confession  of  Sloth"2 — an  ending,  it  may  be  said,  at  once, 
not  more  abrupt  than  that  of  several  of  Sloth's  fellow-sins.  Very 
ingenious  calculations,  based  on  the  average  size  of  MSS  and  the 
number  of  lines  in  them,  led  Mr.  Manly  to  the  conclusion  that  those 

i  Modern  Philology,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  365.  2  Ibid.,  p.  362. 

286 


Piers  Plowman  17 

two  passages  would  correspond,  and  that  the  disappearance  of  one 
sheet  in  a  quire  of  the  original  MS,  that  is,  of  the  two  half-sheets 
on  which  the  two  passages  must  have  been  written,  is  the  proper 
explanation  for  the  two  gaps  said  to  exist  in  the  text. 

This  explanation  seems  to  me  absolutely  untenable,  and  I 
entirely  agree  with  Mr.  Bradley  who  has  pointed  out1  that  no 
conceivable  lost  passage  with  lines  making  a  transition  from  Sloth 
to  Robert  the  Robber  could  be  at  all  satisfactory.  Those  two 
people  cannot  possibly  be  grouped  together;  the  category  to 
which  Robert  belongs  is,  without  possible  doubt,  Coveitise,  who 
like  him  is  bound  to  make  restitution,  and  the  proper  place  for 
the  misplaced  24  lines  is  after  Coveitise:  A,  V,  145.  Mr.  Bradley 
adds  that  such  a  statement  rather  confirms  than  weakens  Mr. 
Manly's  theory  as  to  the  difference  of  authors;  not  only  B  did  not 
notice  that  the  24  lines  were  at  the  wrong  place,  but  he  had  not 
the  slightest  idea  what  the  right  one  was. 

All  these  observations  can  easily  be  answered. 

The  author  of  B,  the  same  I  think  as  the  author  pf  A,  issued, 
after  a  dozen  years  or  more,  a  new  text  of  his  poem,  a  text  which 
he  had  had  more  or  less  constantly  beside  him,  making  changes, 
corrections,  and  additions  as  it  occurred  to  him,  the  usual  way 
with  authors  of  works  of  this  sort,  capable  of  extension.  The 
copy  he  used  was  naturally  a  copy  of  A  as  there  was  no  other  text 
then  in  existence,  with  the  24  lines  certainly  at  the  wrong  place, 
since  he  left  them  there.  His  changes,  which  transformed  a  poem 
of  2,579  lines  into  one  of  7,241,  were  very  numerous;  sometimes 
slight  ones  were  made,  sometimes  new  quotations  were  added, 
sometimes  new  matter  was  introduced  on  a  considerable  scale:  the 
very  way  another  writer,  Montaigne,  also  absorbed  in  his  thoughts, 
actually  worked.  Preceded  by  some  lines  on  the  necessity  of  giving 
back  ill-gotten  goods  ("And  jit  I-chulle  ^elden  ajeyn,"  etc.), 
the  passage  on  Robert  the  Robber,  a  logical  sequence  to  Coveitise, 
forms  a  separate  incident,  not  at  all  necessary  to  make  the  con- 
fession of  the  Deadly  Sins  complete ;  it  has  all  the  appearances  of 
an  afterthought ;  such  afterthoughts  as  the  author,  or  anyone  in  his 
place,  would  write  on  separate  slips  left  loose  or  which  might  get 

1  Athenaeum,  April  21, 1906. 

287 


18  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

loose,  and  which  Adam  Scrivener  of  sleepy  pen  would  copy  any- 
where. And  as  Scrivener,  in  the  present  case,  did  not  know  what 
to  do,  he  put  the  stray  lines  at  the  end  of  the  passus  when  the  rest 
of  the  confessions  were  finished,  so  Robert  would  come  just  before 
the  "pousent  of  men"  who  mourned  for  their  sins,  "weopyng  and 
weylyng." 

For  what  concerns  the  author  himself,  maybe,  while  making  so 
many  changes  in  so  many  places,  he  never  paid  any  attention  to 
this  passage  (in  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  introduced  no 
change  at  all1) ;  maybe  also  he  thought  of  transferring  it  to  its 
proper  place  and  neglected  to  mark  it  accordingly  or  to  see  that 
the  removal  was  made.  The  fact  that  the  confession  of  Coveitise, 
as  remodeled  in  version  B,  contains  a  passage,  not  in  A,  where 
restitution  is  insisted  upon,  at  great  length,  in  most  pressing  lan- 
guage, lends  probability  to  this  latter  hypothesis.  In  version  A 
the  sins  of  this  personage  were  told  with  some  detail,  but  nothing 
except  the  vaguest  allusion  was  made  to  necessary  amends.  In  B, 
on  the  contrary,  restitution  is  one  of  the  points  about  which  we 
hear  most,  the  added  passage  being  highly  picturesque  and  in  the 
author's  best  vein.  Did  you  never  make  restitution  ?  says  Repent- 
ance— 

"  gus,  ones  I  was  herberwed,"  quod  he,  "with  an  hep  of  chapmen, 

I  roos  whan  thei  were  arest"  and  yrifled  here  males." 
"That  was  no  restitucioun,"  quod  Repentance*  "but  a  robberes 

thefte 
"  I  wende  ryflynge  were  restitucioun,"  quod  he'  "  for  I  lerned  nevere 
rede  on  boke, 
And  can  no  Frenche  in  feith'  but  of  the  ferthest  ende  of  Norf olke." 2 

The  restitution  here  alluded  to  is  precisely  that  which  a  peni- 
tent thief  should  make,  the  question  being  of  stolen  goods.  Much 
more  clearly  than  the  lines  added  in  Sloth  (the  bearing  of  which 

1  Two  lines,  248,  249,  of  A  are  omitted  in  B,  a  mere  scribe's  oversight  and  one,  as  Skeat 
has  noticed  (not  at  all  in  view  of  the  present  discussion),  particularly  difficult  to  avoid  in 
copying  alliterative  verses.     (Preface  of  A,  1867,  p.  xvi.) 

2  B,  V,  232;  and  further  on,  Repentance  reverts  to  the  same  subject : 

"  Thow  art  an  unkynde  creature'  I  can  the  nou^te  assoile, 
Til  thow  make  restitucioun"  and  rekne  with  hem  alle, 
And  sitheu  that  resoun  rolle  it"  in  the  regystre  of  hevene, 
That  thow  hast  made  uche  man  good"  I  may  the  nou,,te  assoile ; 

Non  dimittitur  peccatum,  donee  restituitur  ablatum."  — B,  V,  276. 

288 


Piers  Plowman  19 

will  presently  be  examined),  this  addition  looks  like  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  appearance,  shortly  after,  of  Robert  the  Robber,  who, 
too,  should  make  restitution,  but  has  "noujjte  wher-of." 

That  nevertheless,  owing  to  the  author's  omission  or  the  scriv- 
ener's "negligence  and  rape,"  as  Chaucer  would  say,  the  Robert  and 
Restitution  passage  was  left,  as  before,  at  the  wrong  place,  has 
nothing  very  prodigious  or  extraordinary.  There  is  not  even  any 
need  to  suggest  (though  it  may  have  been  the  case)  that  the  poet 
happened  to  be  of  a  conspicuously  careless  nature.  The  most 
careful  people  may  be  at  times  absent-minded.  As  I  was  talking 
recently  about  the  Piers  Plowman  problem  with  a  writer,  who  feels 
greatly  interested  in  it  (as  well  as  in  a  few  other  questions),  whose 
works  have  had  a  wide  circulation  and  have  been  scrutinized  by 
critics,  not  all  of  them  over-friendly,  he  mentioned  that  something 
of  the  sort  had  happened  to  himself.  Opening,  thereupon,  at 
p.  13,  the  Outdoor  Pastimes  of  an  American  Hunter,  a  work  made 
up  of  several  essays,  written  at  different  moments,  with  additions 
and  afterthoughts  noted  on  slips,  he  pointed  out  that  two  slips 
with  the  same  statement  had  not  only  been  allowed  in  by  him, 
but  the  contents  of  the  two  were  repeated  in  the  same  page,  giving 
to  the  whole  a,  to  say  the  least,  somewhat  ludicrous  appearance: 

The  bobcats  are  very  fond  of  prairie  dogs,  and  haunt  the  dog  towns 
as  soon  as  spring  comes  and  the  inhabitants  emerge  from  their  hiber- 
nation  

Bobcats  are  very  fond  of  lurking  round  prairie-dog  towns  as  soon 
as  the  prairie  dogs  come  out  in  spring 

Not  only  critics,  friendly  or  otherwise,  never  noticed  this 
strange  occurrence,  but  the  author  himself  read  three  proofs  of 
the  work,  gave  several  editions  of  it,  and  has  only  just  now  had 
the  mistake  removed. 

Stray  sheets  with  corrections  and  afterthoughts  on  them  are  cer- 
tainly difficult  to  handle  and  require  a  perseverance  in  attention 
which,  without  speaking  of  scribes,  famous  authors  sometimes 
lack.  To  give  only  one  more  example,  I  may  quote  that  of  Cer- 
vantes who,  as  everyone  knows,  represents  Sancho  Panza 
quietly  mounting  his  ass  just  after  Gines  de  Passamonte  had 
stolen  it  from  him.     The  theft  was  an  afterthought  that  Cervantes 

289 


20  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

forgot  to  make  fit  properly  with  the  rest  of  his  work.  Having  be- 
come aware  of  the  mistake,  he  revised  his  text,  but  insufficiently, 
and  left  one  or  two  passages  in  which  Sancho  is  shown  still  riding 
the  stolen  animal.  He  made  fun  of  it  all  later,  in  chaps,  iii  and 
iv  of  the  second  part  of  his  immortal  book;  being  no  less  merry 
about  his  mishap  than  the  President  of  the  United  States  about 
his  own. 

The  same  happened  to  Langland  who,  even  supposing  him  to 
exhibit  no  conspicuous  carelessness,  was  certainly  not  endowed 
with  a  strictly  geometrical  mind,  and  who,  judging  from  results, 
continued  to  the  last  using  slips,  and  loose  sheets  that  were  apt 
to  go  astray.  Another  proof,  unnoticed  till  now,  may  be  given 
from  the  C  version.  In  this  text  the  author  has  added,  among 
other  passages,  some  ten  lines  in  the  speech  delivered  by  Piers 
Plowman  before  he  makes  his  will: 

Consaile  nat  the  comune'  the  Kyng  to  displease;1 

and  do  not,  "my  dere  sone,"  hamper  parliamentary,  judicial,  or 
municipal  authorities  in  the  fulfilling  of  their  duties.  These  lines 
occur  in  C,  after  the  text  of  parenthesis  giving  us  the  name  of 
Piers's  wife  and  children;  they  make  no  proper  continuation, 
neither  to  this  nor  to  what  Piers  was  saying  before,  for  he  was 
saying  that  he  would  help  all,  except  "Jack  p>e  Jogelour"  and 
"folke  of  that  ordre."  What  "dere  sone"  is  he  now  addressing? 
The  passage  thus  inserted  is  so  unsatisfactory  that  Mr.  Skeat's 
marginal  analysis  ceases  there,2  as  it  is  difficult  indeed  to  make 
anything  of  it. 

But  the  whole  can  easily  be  set  right.  In  an  earlier  part  of 
his  same  speech,  Piers  had  been  addressing  especially  the  Knight, 
a  good  knight,  full  of  the  best  will;  he  had  recommended  him  to 
behave  well,  and  to  avoid  dissolute  people.  To  this  advice  in  A 
and  B,  he  added  in  C  one  line,  as  a  link  for  his  afterthought,  viz., 
the  line  reading: 

Contreplede  nat  conscience'  ne  holy  kirke  ryghtes.3 

Owing  to  a  slip  going  wrong  or  to  some  such  mishap,  the  ten  lines 

iC,  IX,  35. 

2Ctext(E.  E.  T.  S.),p.  143.  3Q,  IX,  53. 

290 


Piers  Plowman  21 

were  not  inserted  here  but  elsewhere,  making  there  perfect  non- 
sense. Removed  here,  they  fit  in  perfectly.  Piers,  continuing  to 
address  his  "dere  sone,"  says: 

Consaile  nat  the  comune'  the  Kyng  to  displese, 
Ne  hem  that  han  lavves  to  loke 

Place  these  ten  lines  after  the  above,  and  all  comes  right:  "Con- 
treplede  nat  conscience  ....  consaile  nat  the  comune,"  etc. 
When  Piers  has  finished  this  review  of  a  knight's  duties  (quite 
incomplete  in  the  earlier  versions),  the  old  text  is  resumed  and  fits 
also  perfectly,  the  Knight  saying  as  before:  "Ich  assente  by 
Seynt  Gyle."  Then  comes  also  very  appropriately  Piers's  declara- 
tion as  to  the  disposition  he  has  to  make  before  his  journey,  and, 
as  a  last  preparation,  the  dra wing-up  of  his  testament. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  arrangement  is  the  right  one 
and  was  intended  by  the  author;  no  doubt  either  that  this  is  one 
more  case  of  an  afterthought  which  the  original  copyist  inserted 
at  the  wrong  place,  the  author  taking  no  notice ;  and  as  there  was 
no  further  revision  the  mistake  was  never  corrected. 

With  version  B  and  the  misplaced  Robert  and  Restitution  pas- 
sage, the  case  was  different;  if  Langland  failed  then  to  have  the 
error  corrected  it  was  not  so  when,  for  the  last  time,  he  revised 
his  whole  work.  To  all  appearances  the  revision  was  carried  on 
in  the  same  way  as  before,  with  a  B  text  before  him,  erasures,  cor- 
rections, and  additions  being  made  in  the  text,  on  the  margins,  or 
on  slips.  One  of  the  author's  most  important  corrections  is  (and 
this  had  been  noticed  before  by  critics)  the  new  place  in  the  text 
allotted  by  him  to  this  same  Robert  and  Restitution  incident. 
That  place  is  certainly  the  right  one,  the  one  Mr.  Bradley  suggests, 
and  which  the  whole  bearing  of  the  passus  imperiously  commands. 
It  comes  after  the  confession  and  repentance  of  Coveitise. 

One  particular  which  has  not  been  noticed  deserves,  however, 
special  attention.  The  twenty-four  lines  consist,  as  we  know,  of 
six  verses  on  the  necessity  of  making  restitution,  followed  by  what 
concerns  Robert  the  Robber;  the  six  lines  cannot  be  properly 
attached,  such  as  they  are,  to  any  part  of  the  poem,  neither  where 
they  stand  in  A  and  B,  nor  where  the  confession  of  Coveitise 

291 


22  J.    J.    JUSSEEAND 

ends,  which  is  their  real  place.  Professor  Manly  supposes,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  big  gap  supplying  room  enough  for  a  transition  from 
Sloth  to  Robert  and  Restitution.  C,  who  being,  as  I  think,  the 
author,  knew  better,  not  only  transferred  the  passage  to  the  end 
of  the  confession  of  Coveitise,  but  supplied  what  was  lacking  to 
make  it  fit.  What  was  lacking  was  not  eighty  lines  as  Mr.  Manly 
would  have  us  believe,  but  one. 

Now,  let  anybody  who  has  not  the  poem  at  his  finger's  ends 
try  to  imagine  what  single  verse  can  make  sense  of  that  nonsense : 
we  have  our  twenty-four  lines,  beginning,  in  the  two  texts  where 
they  are  misplaced,  with: 

And  jit  I-chulle  3elden  ajeyn*  gif  I  so  muche  have,1 

and  continuing  with  the  passage  telling  us  of  Robert  who  "on 
Reddite  he  looked,"  and  unable  to  repay,  weeped  full  sore.  What 
is  that  Reddite  he  looked  upon,  and  how  can  the  passage  be  made 
to  form  a  complete  and  satisfactory  whole?  No  such  personage 
as  Reddite  has  been  mentioned.  There  is  not  even  any  mention 
of  some  scroll  with  that  word  on  it.  I  submit  that  only  the  author 
who  knew  from  the  first  what  he  meant,  could  supply  the  single 
necessary  verse.  Let  anyone  who  thinks  he  has  a  chance,  try 
his  skill. 

Here  is,  in  the  meantime,  what  Langland  did.  The  single  line 
he  added  makes  it  clear  that  his  intention  had  been,  not  to  intro- 
duce one  real  man  (Robert),  but  two  real  men;  the  restored 
passage  reads: 

Then  was  ther  a  Walishman1  was  wonderliche  sory, 

He  highte  jyvan  geld  ageyn"2     jf  ich  so  moche  have, 

Al  that  ich  wickeddelich  wan*    sytthen  ich  wit  hadde, 

And  pauh  my  liflode  lacke*  leten  ich  nelle, 

5»at  ech  man  shal  have  hus '  er  ich  hennes  wende  .  .  .  . 3 

Roberd  pe  ryfeler'  on  reddite  lokede 

And  for  per  was  nat  wher-with '  he  wepte  ful  sore. 

—  C,  VII,  309. 

1A,  V,  236;  B,  V,  463. 

2  The  scribe  who  first  placed  this  same  passage  —  minus  the  torn-off  or  somebow  left-off 
first  line  —  at  the  end  of  the  passus  in  A,  considered  that  he  supplied  a  sufficient  connection 
by  simply  changing,  "  He  highte  jyvan  geld  ajeyn,"  which,  taken  apart,  made  such  nonsense 
as  to  strike  even  a  scribe,  into,  "And  jit  I-chulle  jelden  a3eyn." 

3  Mr.  Skeat  considers  these  and  the  following  lines,  six  in  all,  as  forming  the  name  of 
the  Welshman,  a  suggestion  he  offers  somewhat  dubiously,  as  he  abstained  in  both  his 

292 


Piers  Plowman  23 

Now  we  know,  and  it  is  not  the  least  significant  result  of  the 
introduction  of  this  one  line  previously  dropped  by  a  careless 
copyist,  now  we  know  what  was  meant  by  Robert  the  Robber 
"on  Reddite  he  looked;"  he  has  at  present  someone  to  look  upon, 
namely  his  fellow-thief  turned  penitent :  Evan  Yield-Again,  other- 
wise Evan  Reddite,  both  words  being  a  translation  one  of  the 
other.  Mind,  writes  Dr.  Furnivall,  to  whom  I  had  submitted 
this  argument,  that  Yield-Again  is  a  man  and  Reddite  a  mere 
word.  I  mind  very  well,  and  draw  from  it  one  more  argument 
that  we  have  to  do  with  a  single  author.  For  this  is  not  an  iso- 
lated case  of  a  Latin  word  being  transformed  by  Langland  into  a 
personage  having  its  own  part  to  play,  and  bearing  an  English 
name  which  is  a  mere  translation  of  the  Latin  word.  In  passus 
VIII  of  A  (B,  VII,  110),  at  one  of  the  most  solemn  moments  in 
the  whole  poem,  Piers  unfolds  his  bull  in  which  is  written:  "Qui 
bona  egerunt  ibunt  ad  vitam  seternam."  Qui  Bona  egerunt 
becomes  at  once  Dowel,  a  separate  personage  who  may  help  men 
or  not,  according  to  their  merits,  and  the  search  for  whom  becomes 
the  subject  of  the  following  passus.  In  the  same  connection  may 
be  quoted  another  example  from  a  previous  passus.  In  A,  II,  we 
hear  that  "Favel  with  feir  speche"  has  brought  together  Fals  and 
Meed.  Some  lines  further  on,  "Feir  speche"  has  become  a  steed 
which  Favel  rides  to  go  to  Westminster,  and  which  is  "ful  feyntly 
a-tyred."1 

But  why,  one  may  say,  select,  of  all  people,  poor  Evan  as  a 
typical  thief,  willing,  it  is  true,  to  make  restitution,  but  a  thief 
none  the  less,  and  why  produce  him  as  a  parallel  to  "Robert  the 

editions  from  hyphenating,  as  he  does  usually  in  such  cases,  the  whole  succession  of  words 
said  to  compose  the  colossal  name.  The  hypothesis  is  not  an  impossible  one  as  Welsh  peo- 
ple were  famous  for  the  length  of  their  names  and  Langland  was  fond  of  inventing  such 
appellations.  It  seems  more  probable,  however  —  MSS  giving  of  course  no  indication  — 
that  the  name  is  simply  Evan  Yield-Again,  and  that  the  rest  is  the  speech  by  which  he,  quite 
appropriately,  shows  that  he  is  really  "  wonderliche  sory."  It  frequently  occurs  with  our  poet 
that  the  transition  from  the  indirect  to  the  direct  speech  is  very  abrupt,  and  it  is  not  always 
easy  to  be  quite  sure  where  the  talking  begins.  See,  for  example,  the  passage  B,  II,  146, 
where  the  author  tells  us  of  Favel  distributing  money  to  secure  false-witnesses;  it  ends  by  a 
line  which  we  must  suppose  to  be  pronounced  by  Favel  himself.  The  money  is  given,  we 
are  told,  to  secure  the  good  will  of  notaries, 

And  feffe  False-witnes "  with  floreines  ynowe ; 
"For  he  may  Mede  amaistrye"  and  maken  at  my  wille." 

Cf.  C,  III,  158,  where  Skeat  hypothetically  attributes  a  longer  speech  to  Favel. 
iA,  II,  23,140. 

293 


24  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

Robber,"  also  a  penitent  thief,  but  a  thief?  With  Robert  the  case 
is  clear;  the  association  of  the  two  words,  as  Mr.  Skeat,  in  his  in- 
valuable treasure  of  Notes,  has  well  shown,  was  traditional:  "Per 
Robert,  robber  designatur."1  But  what  of  Evan,  "the  Walish- 
man"? 

The  name  and  the  man  fit  the  passage  one  as  well  as  the  other. 
Welshmen  were  proverbially  taunted  by  their  English  neighbors 
with  an  inclination  to  thievery  (and  they,  in  true  neighborly 
fashion,  reciprocated  the  compliment).  Their  own  compatriot, 
Giraldus  Cambrensis,  praises,  in  his  Description  of  Wales,  their 
quick  intelligence,  sobriety,  hospitality,  love  of  their  country,  but 
he  has  a  chapter  "Quod  rapto  vivunt,"  in  the  first  phrase  of 
which  he  explains  that  it  is  not  for  them  a  mere  question  of 
plundering  their  neighbors,  but  that  they  act  likewise  "among 
themselves."  The  Parliamentary  petitions  show,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  complaints  were  ceaseless  against  Welshmen  for 
their  plunder  and  robberies;  they  "robbent  et  raunsenont  et 
preignent  bestes,  biens  et  chateux;"  the  bordering  shires  are  all 
spoilt  and  ruined  ("degastez  et  destruz")  owing  to  their  misdeeds,3 
and,  what  is  well  worthy  of  remark,  those  shires  whose  names  and 
complaints  constantly  recur  in  the  series  of  petitions  are,  to  take 
an  example  of  the  year  1376,  the  year  of  text  B,  "Wyrcestre, 
Salop,  Stafford,  Hereford,  Bristut  et  Glouc'."4  The  first-named  of 
these  shires  which  want  Welsh  thieves  to  be  punished  and  obliged 
to  make  restitution — for  this  too  is  mentioned  in  the  petitions5 — 
is  Worcester,  the  very  region  where,  on  "Malverne  hulles,"  it 
befell  Langland  "for  to  slepe  for  weyrynesse  of  wandryng." 
No  wonder  that  the  misdeeds  of  Evan  the  Welshman,  and  Robert 

1  Wright's  Political  Songs,  p.  49,  mentioned  in  Skeat's  Notes,  p.  125. 

2  "  Ad  hoc  etiam  rapinis  insistere,  raptoque  vivere,  furto  et  latrocinio,  non  solum  ad 
exteros  et  hostiles  populos,  verum  etiam  inter  se  proprium  habent."  —  Descriptio  Cambrics 
....  Opera,  Brewer,  Vol.  VI,  p.  207. 

33  Ric.  II,  1379-80,  Rolls  of  Parliament.  Such  complaints  are  particularly  numerous 
during  the  reign  of  Richard  II. 

+  50  Ed.  Ill,  Rolls,  Vol.  II,  352. 

5  In  a  petition  of  2  H,  IV,  1400-1,  embodying  wishes  which  certainly  did  not  originate 
then,  we  find  that,  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  "  countez  ajoignantz  k  les  marcliies  de 
Galys,"  Welshmen  —  "les  gentz  du  Galys"— continued  to  steal  "chivalx,  jumentz,  boefs, 
vaches,  berbitz,  porks,  et  altres  lour  bienz,"  The  interested  parties  ask  that  these 
"meffesoura"  be  ordered  to  make  restitution,  "lour  facent  deliverer  lour  distressez  biens 
et  chateux  issint  prisez  et  arrestez,  saunz  ascun  dilay e."  —  Rolls,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  474. 

294 


Piers  Plowman  25 

the  Robber  were  linked  together  in  his  mind,  and  that  he  never 
had  a  good  word  for  Welshmen.1  Even  this  detail  deserves  to 
be  noted,  that  in  showing  his  two  penitent  thieves,  the  common 
robber  who  is  willing  to  make  restitution,  but  has  not  withal,  and 
the  other  who  is  willing  and  able  to  a  certain  extent,  the  poet 
strictly  adhered  to  realities.  The  Evanses  of  the  border  usually 
carried  away  sheep  and  cattle  which  they  might  have  bodily  re- 
stored in  most  cases  if  they  had  been  truly  "sory"  for  their  mis- 
deeds. 

It  will  be  admitted,  I  hope,  that  once  more  poem  and  real  facts 
turn  out  to  fit  together  quite  well,  and  tally  better  with  my  plea 
than  with  Professor  Manly's.  Far  from  showing  a  diversity  of 
authors,  the  study  of  the  question  of  the  shifted  passage  strongly 
confirms  what  other  indications  led  us  to  believe,  namely  that  the 
poet  who  wrote  C  must  have  written  A  also.  Both,  and  conse- 
quently B,  must  be,  so  far  as  shown  by  the  facts  under  considera- 
tion, the  work  of  one  and  the  same  Langland. 

IV 

But  with  reference  to  the  shifted  passage,  other  points  have 
been  mentioned  by  Professor  Manly,  it  will  be  remembered,  as 
denoting  a  plurality  of  authorship.  According  to  him  the  author 
of  B,  not  knowing  what  he  was  about,  tried,  "rather  ingeniously," 
to  justify  the  presence  of  the  Robert  and  Restitution  passage  after 
the  confession  of  Sloth,  and,  in  view  of  this,  he  introduced  in  the 
latter' s  speech  a  declaration  that  "he  had  been  so  slothful  as  to 
withhold  the  wages  of  his  servants  and  to  forget  to  return  things 
he  had  borrowed." 

The  author  of  B,  on  the  contrary,  never  dreamt,  as  I  take  it, 
of  making  any  such  attempt,  and  if  he  took  any  notice  at  all  of 
the  passage,  it  was  to  prepare  its  being  removed  to  where  it  should 
appear,  though  he  neglected  to  see  that  the  change  was  effected. 
His  additions  in  the  confession  of  Sloth  show,  in  any  case,  no 
intention  to  lead  to  the  subject  of  Robert  the  Robber  and  of  resti- 
tution. 

1  "Griffin  the  Walsche,"  in  the  three  texts  of  the  same  passus  where  Yield-Again 
appears,  is  mentioned  as  one  of  the  roisterous  friends  of  Gloton  (A,  V,  167). 

295 


26  J.    J.    JUSSEKAND 

As  Langland  was,  at  various  periods,  revising  his  text,  he  now 
and  then  filled  gaps,  replaced  perfunctory  sketches  by  more 
finished  portraits,  and  added,  as  in  the  case  of  Coveitise  for 
example,  some  excellent  details  to  pictures  already  very  good.  He 
did  so  as  it  occurred  to  him,  without  showing  that  thoroughness 
and  regularity  of  design  that  would  have  been  a  matter  of  course 
with  an  independent  reviser  and  continuator,  and  the  raison  cV&tre 
of  his  work.  Anyone,  I  consider,  assigning  to  himself  the  task 
of  revising  such  a  poem  as  the  first  version  of  Piers  Plowman, 
would  not  have  left  Lechour  with  his  five  insignificant,  not  to 
say  irrelevant,  lines,  which  are  even  reduced  to  four  in  B.  But 
an  author  caring  so  little  for  geometrical  regularity  as  Lang- 
land  did,  could  very  well  leave  Lechour  alone  for  the  present,  to 
remodel  his  portrait  later,  or  not,  as  suited  his  fancy.  So  it  is  that 
only  in  C  do  we  find  a  real  confession  of  this  sin,  in  twenty-six 
lines. 

A  striking  proof  of  this  ungeometrical  disposition  of  mind  in 
our  author  is  supplied  by  the  very  question  of  the  Deadly  Sins, 
a  disposition,  not  to  say  an  infirmity,  so  peculiar  as  practically  to 
corroborate  our  belief  in  the  unity  of  authorship.  Every  critic 
has  noticed  that,  in  the  series  of  sins  depicted  in  A,  passus  V, 
Wrath  is  lacking.  It  has  never  been  observed  that  in  this  vast 
poem  dealing  with  the  reformation  of  mankind,  in  which  the 
Deadly  Sins  constantly  recur  to  the  author's  mind,  being  specifically 
dealt  with  four  times,  out  of  those  four  lists  only  one  is  complete, 
as  first  given  in  any  of  the  three  versions.  The  order  is  never  the 
same,  which  makes  it  easier  for  the  writer  to  forget  one  or  the 
other  of  the  sins ;  on  second  thoughts  he  sometimes  corrects  his  list, 
sometimes  not.  An  independent  reviser  would  scarcely  have 
acted  so. 

In  the  "feffement"  of  Meed  (A,  II,  63),  the  Deadly  Sins  figure 
as  Pride,  Envy,  Avarice,  Gluttony,  Lechery,  Sloth — Wrath  is  lack- 
ing. In  the  corresponding  passage  of  B  and  C  the  order  is,  as 
usual,  modified:  Lechery  comes  before  Gluttony,  but  the  absence 
of  Wrath  has  been  noticed,  and  we  find  now  mentioned:  "the 
erldome  of  envye  and  wratthe  togideres."1 

IB,  II,  83;  C,  III,  88. 

296 


Piers  Plowman  27 

Wrath  was  certainly  absent  from  Langland's  mind  when  he 
wrote  this  version  A,  as  in  his  next  enumeration  there  of 
the  Sins,  that  is,  in  passus  V,  when  they  all  confess  and  repent, 
Wrath  is  again  forgotten.  The  order  is  not  the  same  as  be- 
fore, being  as  follows:  Pride,  Lechery,  Envy,  Avarice,  Glut- 
tony, Sloth.1  Having  noticed  the  lack  of  Wrath  in  the  pre- 
vious passage,  Langland,  when  he  revised  his  text,  added  him 
here  too,  in  B.  This  addition  is  naturally  preserved  in  the  C 
revision,  but  the  order  of  the  series  is  once  more  modified.  In  B 
the  order  was  Pride,  Lechery,  Envy,  Wrath,  Avarice,  Gluttony, 
Sloth;  in  C  we  have  Pride,  Envy,  Wrath,  Lechery,  Avarice, 
Gluttony,  Sloth. 

Farther  on,  in  the  B  text,  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  appear 
again  as  forming  spots  on  the  coat  of  "Haukyn  the  Actyf 
man."  This  is  the  only  complete  list,  and  is  as  follows:  Pride, 
Wrath,  Envy,  Lechery,  Avarice  (alias  Coveitise),  Gluttony, 
Sloth.2 

Farther  on  again,  the  sins  are  enumerated  as  constituting  the 
main  dangers  threatening  the  wealthy,  and  the  list  is:  Pride, 
Wrath,  Gluttony,  Sloth,  Avarice,  Lechery,  Sloth  again,  total  seven; 
but  Sloth  is  named  twidfe  and  Envy  is  lacking.3 

In  C,  the  Haukyn  passage  is  fused  with  the  confessions;  but 
the  list  of  the  dangers  is  preserved.  It  is  not  left  just  as  it  was, 
for  C  notices  that,  in  B,  Sloth  was  named  twice;  he  suppresses 
the  word,  therefore,  on  the  least  important  of  the  two  occasions, 
and  so  we  have:  "hus  glotonye  and  grete  synne"  (C,  XVII,  77), 
instead  of:  "his  glotonie  and  his  grete  scleuthe"  (B,  XIV,  234). 
But,  in  spite  of  his  desire,  thus  made  evident,  to  revise  and  improve, 
the  author  of  C,  afflicted  with  the  same  infirmity  of  mind  as  the 
author  of  A  and  B,  does  not  observe  that  Envy  is  lacking;  he 
none  the  less  gravely  repeats  twice  that  he  is  dealing  with  the 
"sevene  synnes  pat  f>er  ben"  (XVII,  44),  that  he  speaks  "of  the 
sevene  synnes"  (XVII,  61).  As  there  was  no  further  revision, 
this  list  remained  definitively  incomplete.  Such  peculiarities  are 
indeed  so  peculiar  as  to  be,  in  a  way,  the  author's  mark — his  seal 

1  A,  V,  45. 

2  B,  XIII,  276.  3  B,  XIV,  215. 

297 


28 


J.    J.    JUSSERAND 


and  signature.1     It  is  most  unlikely  that  any  reviser  would  have 
failed  to  "find  the  concord  of  this  discord." 

Concerning  the  additions  to  Sloth,  in  version  B,  it  is  easy  to 
show  that,  like  those  introduced,  at  the  same  time,  by  the  author  in 
the  confession  of  several  other  sins,  they  have  no  object  but  to 
bring  his  description  nearer  to  the  generally  accepted  type.  For 
what  regards  Sloth,  commonly  held  to  be  the  source  and  cause 
of  so  many  other  faults,  the  poet  examines  the  whole  life  of  the 
slothful  man,  mainly,  in  his  eyes,  the  man  who  neglects  his  duties. 
This  was  not  at  all  a  strange  or  original  notion,  but  a  commonplace 
one  in  those  days.  The  pleasure  such  a  man  takes  in  finding  "an 
hare  in  a  felde"  does  not,  to  be  sure,  correspond  exactly  to  our  idea 
of  slothfulness,  but  it  corresponds  to  Langland's,  who  shows  his 
sinner  neglecting,  meanwhile,  to  make  himself  proficient  in  church 
Latin.  Sloth  also  neglects  to  come  to  mass  in  time,  to  fulfil  his 
vows,  to  perform  his  penances,  to  keep  his  own  house  well,  to  pay 
his  servants,  workmen,  and  creditors  their  due,  to  thank  those  who 
have  been  kind  to  him.  He  wastes  quantities  of  "flesche  and 
fissche,"  cheese,  ale,  etc.     His  life  has  ever  been  one  of  neglect: 

I  ran  aboute  in  gouthe"  and  gaf  me  nou^te  to  lerne. 

There  is  no  intimation  that  any  of  his  misdeeds  was  committed 
with  the  intention  of  winning  money;  it  was  with  him  mere 
negligence;  if  the  author  of  B  had  really  introduced  any  of  these 
additions  in  order  to  make  the  confession  fit  with  the  restitution 
passage,  he  would  have  expressed  himself  otherwise,  or  would  have 
chosen  another  alliterating  letter  and  another  word  than  wan  in 
the  line: 


1  The  following  table  shows  the  number  and  order  of  the  Sins  as  given  in  the  earliest 
version  where  they  appear. 


A,  II 

A,V 

B,  XIII 

B,  XIV 

C,  XVII 

Pride 

Envy_ 

Avarice 

Gluttony 

Lechery 

Sloth 

Pride 

Lechery 

Envy 

Avarice 

Gluttony 

Sloth 

Pride 

Wrath 

Envy 

Lechery 

Avarice 

Gluttony 

Sloth 

Pride 

Wrath 

Gluttony 

Sloth 

Avarice 

Lechery 

Sloth  again 

Pride 

Wrath 

Gluttony 

Avarice 

Lechery 

Sloth 

Wrath  is  lacking 

Wrath  is  lacking 

Envy  is  lacking 

Envy  is  lacking 

298 


Piers  Plowman  29 

And  5ete  wil  I  jelde  ajeiir  if  I  so  moche  have, 
Al  Pat  I  wikkedly  wan.1 

In  truth,  as  I  said,  Langland  had  no  other  intent,  in  remodeling 
this  passage,  than  to  bring  his  picture  near  to  the  accepted  type, 
and  so  he  did.  We  may  see  in  Chaucer  what  was  the  importance 
of  that  sin  so  summarily  dispatched,  at  first,  in  the  Visions,  and 
how  it  led  people  to  the  neglect  of  all  their  duties,  the  temporal 
ones  as  well  as  the  spiritual: 

Necligence  is  the  norice  [of  all  harme]  ....  This  foule  sinne  Accidie 
is  eek  ful  greet  enemy  to  the  lyflode  of  the  body;  for  it  ne  hath  no  pur- 
veaunce  agayn  temporel  necessitee;  for  it  forsleweth  and  forsluggeth, 
and  destroyeth  alle  goodes  temporel es  by  reccheleesnesse  ....  Of 
[lachesse]  comth  poverte  and  destruccioun,  bothe  of  spirituel  and  tem- 
porel thinges.2 

In  similar  fashion  the  confession  of  Sloth,  as  it  reads  in  text  B 
of  Piers  Plowman,  ends  by  an  allusion  to  the  state  of  beggary  to 
which  he  has  been  reduced  by  his  "foule  sleuthe."  Not  a  word 
in  these  additions  implies  that  the  author  really  considered  that 
the  Robert  and  Restitution  passage  should  come  next  and  that 
he  ought  to  insert  details  leading  up  to  it. 

Dwelling  on  Wrath,  forgotten  in  version  A,  and  added  in  ver- 
sion B,  Professor  Manly  thinks  he  detects  a  proof  of  a  difference 
of  authorship  in  the  differences  of  merit  and  of  style.  The  Wrath 
confession  in  B  is,  according  to  him,  "totally  different  in  style 
from  the  work  of  A,  and  indeed  more  appropriate  for  Envy  than 
for  Wrath,  containing  as  it  does  no  very  distinctive  traits  of  Wrath. 
The  additions  ....  are  confused,  vague,  and  entirely  lacking  in 
the  finer  qualities  of  imagination,  organization,  and  diction  shown 
in  all  A's  work.  In  A,  each  confession  is  sketched  with  inimi- 
table vividness  and  brevity." 3 

The  answer  is:  (1)  An  author  is  not  bound,  under  pain  of  be- 
ing cleft  in  twain,  always  to  show  the  same  merits,  in  every  respect, 
on  every  occasion,  at  all  times;  (2)  the  confessions  in  A  are  not 
so  good,  and  the  additions  in  B  are  not  so  bad  as  Professor  Manly 
makes  them  out.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  these  additions  are 

i  B,  V,  463. 

2  Parson's  Tale—De  Accidia,  §§  53  S . 

3  Modern  Philology,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  365;  Cambridge  History,  II,  p.  15. 

299 


30  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

excellent,  and  more  than  one  of  the  cleverest  and  most  humorous 
touches  in  the  whole  poem  are  to  be  found  in  them;1  others  are 
not  so  happy.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  confessions  as  first 
drafted  in  A,  some  of  which  are  excellent,  and  others  far  from  good. 
Thus  it  is  that,  in  version  A,  supposed  to  be  so  perfect,  Pride, 
represented  by  Pernel  Proud-herte,  concludes  her  speech  by  a 
promise  to 

merci  be-seche 
Of  al  that  ichave  i-had*  envye  in  myn  herte.2 

As  Mr.  Manly  said  of  the  Wrath  portrait  in  B,  this  is  "indeed 
more  appropriate  for  Envy"  than  for  Pride,  and  this  similarity  in 
aptitude  for  confusion,  if  it  has  any  bearing  at  all  on  the  problem, 
can  but  confirm  our  belief  in  a  unity  of  authorship.  The  same 
repenting  Pernel  undertakes,  in  version  A,  to  reform:  she  will 
wear  a  hair  smock, 

Forte  fayten  hire  flesch"  that  frele  was  to  synne. 

This  kind  of  penance  and  this  allusion  to  flesh  "frail  to  sin" 
would  certainly  fit  another  Sin  better  than  Pride,  as  shown  by 
the  author  of  A  himself  who,  in  passus  III,  had  had  the  words 
"heo  is  frele  of  hire  flesch"  applied  to  Meed  in  the  same  speech 
where  she  is  described  as  being  "as  comuyn  as  p>e  cart-wei."  In 
this  same  A  text,  described  as  so  far  above  the  additions  in  B, 
repenting  Lechour  declares  that  his  penance  will  consist  in  eating 
and  drinking  less  than  before  on  Saturdays ;  which  is,  if  one  may 
be  permitted  to  say  so,  to  "take  it  easy."  While  Professor  Manly 
alleges  that  the  attributes  of  Wrath  in  text  B  would  better  suit 
Envy,   it   turns   out   that  in  A,   inversely,    one   of   the    classical 

1  Important  additions  were  introduced  in  the  confession  of  Coveitise.  Repentance 
obliges  the  sinner  to  examine  his  conscience  (a  passage  has  been  quoted  above,  p.  18),  and 
tell  of  his  various  misdeeds  among  chapmen,  lords,  Lombards,  etc.  Repentance  goes  on 
saying: 

"  Hastow  pite  on  bore  men'  bat  mote  nedes  borwe?  " 
"I  have  as  moche  pite  of  pore  men'  as  pedlere  hath  of  cattes, 
J>at  wolde  kille  hem,  yf  he  cacche  hem  my(ite-  for  coveitise  of  here  skynnes." 

-B,  V,  257. 
All  the  passage  is  as  vivid,  sharp,  and  pregnant  as  any  anywhere  in  version  A. 

2  A,  V,  52.  3  A,  III,  117,  127. 

300 


Piers  Plowman  31 

attributes  of  Wrath,  the  sowing  of  feuds  and  quarrels,  is  bestowed 
on  Envy,  who  says  of  his  neighbor: 

Bitvveue  hhn  and  his  meyne*  ichave  i-mad  wraththe, 
Bothe  his  lyf  and  his  leome'  was  lost  thorvv  my  tonge.1 

If  this  sort  of  confusion  between  Wrath  and  Envy  proved 
anything,  it  would  again  prove  unity  of  authorship,  as  we  find  it 
in  both  A  and  B.  It  proves  nothing  in  reality,  except  that  Lang- 
land  was  of  his  time,  and  that  he  was  of  it  as  well  when  he  wrote 
B  as  when  he  wrote  A.  In  all  mediaeval  accounts  of  the  Deadly 
Sins,  the  descriptions  constantly  overlap  each  other,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  cases  being  precisely  that  of  Wrath  and  Envy ; 
the  one  was  held  to  be  the  source  of  the  other:  "Envye,"  says 
Wyclif,  "is  modir  of  ire."2  "After  Envye,"  says  Chaucer's 
Parson,  "wol  I  descry ven  the  sinne  of  Ire.  For  soothly,  who-so 
hath  envye  upon  his  neighebor,  anon  he  wole  comunly  flnde  him 
a  matere  of  wratthe,  in  worde  or  in  dede,  agayns  him  to  whom 
he  hath  envye."  So  begins  Chaucer's  chapter  on  Wrath  in  the 
Parson's  Tale.  Well  might  Langland  include  Wrath  and  Envy 
in  a  single  "erledome,"  when  revising  his  first  text. 

In  that  description  of  Wrath  so  unsatisfactory  to  Professor 
Manly,  and  added  to  text  B,  this  sin  is  shown  "with  two  whyte 
eyen,  and  nyvelynge  (sniveling)  with  the  nose."  He  goes  about 
sowing  discord,  making  friars  and  members  of  the  secular  clergy 
hate  each  other,  scattering  scandal  and  jangles  in  convents  (not 
an  insignificant  sin  this  one,  according  to  our  author,  who  had 
said  before,  in  version  A,  "  Japers  and  jangelers,  Judas  children") , 
behaving  so  that  people  meant  to  live  in  peace, 

Hadde  pei  had  knyves,  bi  Cryst*  her  eyther  had  killed  other.3 

All  this  is  considered  by  Professor  Manly  so  preposterous  that 
the  author  of  A  could  never  have  written  anything  like  it;  if  the 
author  of  B  did,  he  must  have  been  a  different  man.  But,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  the  author  of  A  was  not  at  all  incapable  of  admit- 

1  A,  V,  80.  Cf .  Chaucer,  who,  however,  is  careful  to  place  his  statement  under  Ire : 
"For  soothly,  almost  al  the  harm  that  any  man  dooth  to  his  neighebore  comth  of  wratthe." 
— Parsons  Tale,  §  34. 

2  On  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  chap.  xii.  3  B,  V,  165. 

301 


32  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

ting  irrelevant  matter  into  his  text,  and  on  the  other  hand,  there 
was  nothing  preposterous  in  these  additions;  they  were,  on  the 
contrary,  commonplace ;  such  characteristics  are  paid  full  attention 
to  by  Chaucer's  Parson:  "Now  comth  the  sinne  of  hem  that  sowen 
or  maken  discord  amonges  folk,  which  is  a  sinne  that  Crist  hateth 
outrely."  Jangling  is  another  characteristic  of  Wrath:  "Now 
comth  Janglinge  ....  [and]  comth  the  sinne  of  Japeres  .... 
The  vileyns  wordes  and  knakkes  of  Japeris  [conforten]  hem  that 
travaillen  in  the  service  of  the  devel."1 

This  same  chapter  on  Ire  well  shows  how  vague  were  the 
limits  assigned  then  to  each  sin.  Following  accepted  manuals, 
and  not  considering  there  was  any  reason  for  him  to  make 
changes,  Chaucer  speaks,  as  coming  under  the  scope  of  Ire,  of 
those  who  "treten  unreverently  the  sacrement  of  the  auter,"  of 
swearing,  of  the  various  sinful  ways  of  bringing  about  mis- 
carriages, of  "adjuracioun,  conjuracion,"  charms  and  the  like,  of 
"Flateringe"  unexpectedly  associated  with  Wrath:  "I  rekene 
flaterye  in  the  vyces  of  Ire,  for  ofte  tyme,  if  o  man  be  wrooth 
with  another,  thanne  wol  he  flatere  som  wight  to  sustene  him  in 
his  querele."  Here  is  a  good  occasion  for  anyone  who  remembers 
in  what  style  the  rest  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  were  written  to  show 
that  England  rejoiced  not  only  in  several  Langlands  but  in  a 
large  number  of  Chaucers. 

V 

Other  arguments  yet  have  been  put  forth  in  order  to  show  that 
the  author  of  version  B  could  not  have  been  the  author  of  version 
A;  very  telling  ones  if  they  held  good.  Remodeling  version  A, 
the  author  of  B  is  said  to  have  misunderstood  or  spoilt  several 
passages  in  it,  and  he  cannot  therefore  have  originally  composed 
that  version.  The  following  examples  are  given,  being  doubtless 
the  best  available  ones.2 

— "In  II,  21  ff.  Lewte  is  introduced  as  the  leman  of  lady  Holy 
Church  and  spoken  of  as  feminine."     Allusion  is  here  made  by 

1  Sequitur  de  Ira,  §§  45,  47. 

2  Cambridge  History,  II,  p.  32. 

302 


Piers  Plowman  33 

Professor  Manly  to  the  linos  in  B  where  the  handsome  lady 
"purfiled  with  pelure"  tells  the  dreamer  that  Meed  has 

....  ylakked  my  lemman*  Pat  lewte  is  hoten 
And  bilowen  hire  to  lordes*  pat  lawes  han  to  kepe. 

The  answer  is:  (1)  There  cannot  be  any  question  here  of  B 
having  misunderstood  A,  as  the  passage  is  quite  different  in  both 
texts,  and  there  is  no  mention  at  all  of  Lewte  in  A.  (2)  "Lem- 
man"  does  not  necessarily  mean  a  man  and  a  paramour;  to  use  it 
otherwise  is  not  to  commit  any  error ;  a  leman  is  a  tenderly  loved 
being  of  any  sex:  Spenser's  Proteus  asks  Florimel  "to  be  his 
leman  and  his  ladie  trew."  If  Florimel  could  play  the  part  of  a 
leman,  why  not  Lewte?  And,  as  the  pelure  purfiled  lady  in  the 
Visions  was  Holy  Church,  we  may  take  it  for  granted  that  a  differ- 
ence of  sex  had  little  to  do  in  her  choice  of  a  "  lemman."  (3)  Very 
possibly  there  may  be  nothing  more  in  the  passage  than  a  scribe's 
error,  "hire"  being  put  in  instead  of  "hym;"  the  more  probable 
as  the  correction  is  made  in  C: 

And  lackyd  hym  to  lordes1  that  lawes  han  to  kepe.1 

Of  B  having  failed  to  understand  or  of  having  committed  any 
error,  there  is  no  trace. 

— "In  II,  25,  False  instead  of  Wrong  is  father  of  Meed,  but  is 
made  to  marry  her  later."  It  is  a  fact  that  we  have  in  A, 
"Wrong  was  hir  syre,"  and  in  B, 'Fals  was  hire  fader,"  also  that  in 
B,  as  in  all  the  other  versions,  Meed  none  the  less  marries  Fals. 

Without  any  doubt,  when  writing  B,  the  author  decided  to  modify 
entirely  the  family  connections  of  Meed,  and  not  without  good 
cause.  In  the  first  version,  so  highly  praised,  the  incoherency 
was  such  as  to  make  a  change  indispensable.  Wrong  was  very 
badly  chosen  as  a  father  for  Meed,  and  was  given,  besides,  nothing 
to  do.  The  marriage  was  not  arranged  by  him;  the  marriage 
portion  was  not  supplied  by  him;  in  the  journey  to  Westminster 
he  was  forgotten;  his  part  was  limited  to  signing  first  among 
many  others,  the  "feffment"  charter  supplied  by  other  people. 
And  while  he  did  nothing  in  this  important  occurrence  when,  as 

i  c,  III,  21. 

303 


34  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

a  father,  he  should  have  been  most  busy,  he  suddenly  reappeared 
in  the  next  passus  (as  a  murderer  and  a  thief)  ;  he  was  then  full  of 
activity.  Together  with  Peace,  Wit,  Wisdom,  etc.,  Meed  took  part 
in  the  scene,  but  her  blood-relationship  with  Wrong  had  been 
entirely  forgotten  and  not  a  word  was  said  implying  any  connection 
between  the  two :  incoherency  was  there  absolute.  Wrong,  more- 
over, was  too  thoroughly  an  objectionable  father  for  Meed.  From 
Wrong  nothing  but  wrong  can  come;  and  yet,  in  this  same  text  A, 
no  less  a  personage  than  Theology  assures  us  that  Meed  is  not  so 
bad  after  all.  She  is  of  gentle  blood,  "a  mayden  ful  gent;  heo 
mihte  cusse  pe  Kyng  for  cosyn  .  .  .  ."  How  so,  if  the  daughter 
of  Wrong?  In  the  same  version,  on  the  other  hand,  Favel  does 
everything,  and  acts  as  the  real  father;  it  is  he  who  assumes  the 
responsibility  and  the  charges  of  the  marriage;  he  who  supplies 
money  to  secure  false  witnesses  at  Westminster,  who  rejoices  with 
Fals  at  the  prospective  success  of  the  lawsuit.  It  is  between  him 
and  Fals  —  Wrong  being  forgotten — that  Meed  rides  to  London. 

The  obvious  thing  to  do  in  case  of  a  revision  was  to  suppress 
Wrong  in  the  marriage  preliminaries,  and  give  Meed  a  less  oppro- 
brious parentage.  Favel,  not  so  repulsive  as  Wrong,  was  a  ready- 
found  father,  the  part  of  whom  he  had  in  fact  already  been  playing. 
Such  are  precisely  the  changes  adopted  by  Langland  when  re- 
writing his  poem.  That  Fals  instead  of  Favel  appears  in  the 
half-line  quoted  above,  owing  to  an  obvious  mistake  as  Meed 
marries  Fals  immediately  after,  is  of  no  importance.  Such  slips 
of  the  pen  would  be  difficult  for  any  copyist,  and  even  for  any 
author,  to  avoid,  in  such  a  passage  as  this,  with  so  many  lines 
alliterating  in  /,  and  Favel  fair  speech,  and  Fals  fickle  tongue, 
constantly  succeeding  one  another. 

This  is  not  a  mere  surmise,  put  forth  for  the  sake  of  argument ; 
it  is  a  demonstrable  fact.  The  same  confusion  between  these  two 
names,  the  same  use  of  the  one  instead  of  the  other,  do  not  occur 
only  in  text  B,  but  also  in  text  C,  and  also  in  text  A  itself:  one 
more  kind  of  mistake  which,  if  it  demonstrates  anything,  can  only 
show  a  similitude  of  authorship.  In  version  A,  II,  the  feoffment 
is  said,  on  1.  58,  to  be  made  by  Fals,  and  three  lines  farther  on  by 
Favel;  Fals  is  a  mistake  for  Favel.     In  version  C,  we  are  told, 

304 


Piers  Plowman  35 

in  passus  III,  1.  25,  that  "Favel  was  hure  fader,"  and  on  1.  121, 
that  "  Fals  were  hure  fader." 

The  intention  to  make  it  Favel  throughout,  in  B  as  well  as  C,  is, 
however,  certain :  Fals  in  these  texts  continues  to  be  the  prospective 
husband  and  therefore  cannot  be  the  father;  Wrong  is  no  longer 
mentioned  in  either,  so  that  there  is  only  left  Favel,  correctly  men- 
tioned as  such  in  C,  III,  25.  The  same  intention  to  give  Meed 
a  different  parentage,  better  justifying  Theology's  otherwise  ludi- 
crous remarks,  is  also  shown  by  Langland  adding  in  B  a  mention 
that  Meed  had  "Amendes"  for  her  mother,  a  virtuous  character, 
and  the  point  is  further  insisted  on  in  C:  Meed's  marriage  can- 
not be  valid  without  her  mother's  consent — 

Amendes  was  hure  moder  by  trewe  mennes  lokyng; 
Without  hure  moder  Amendes*  Mede  may  noght  be  wedded.1 

The  author  of  B  has  certainly  neither  "misunderstood"  nor 
spoilt  A  in  this  passage;  just  the  reverse;  he  made  sense  of  what 
was  very  near  being  nonsense. 

— "In  II,  74  ff.,  B  does  not  understand  that  the  feoffment 
covers  precisely  the  provinces  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  and  by 
elaborating  the  passage  spoils  the  unity  of  intention." 

That  B,  on  the  contrary,  understood  perfectly  that  the  Seven 
Deadly  Sins  were  in  question  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  took 
notice  of  only  six  appearing  in  A  at  this  place,  and  that  he  added 
the  seventh.  He  gives  some  supplementary  details  on  each  of  the 
sinful  "erledomes"  or  "lordeships"  bestowed  on  the  couple,  the 
"chastlets"  and  "countes"  these  territories  include.  The  unity 
of  intention  is  in  no  way  impaired. 

—  "In  II,  176,  B  has  forgotten  that  the  bishops  are  to  accom- 
pany Meed  to  Westminster  and  represents  them  as  borne  'abrode 
in  visytynge.'  " 

The  answer  is  (1)  B  had  no  chance  to  forget  any  such  thing, 
as  he  was,  without  any  doubt,  working  with  a  text  of  A  at  his 
elbow.  When  he  wrote  his  1.  176,  he  had  before  him  1.  151 
in  A.  (2)  Contrary  to  what  Professor  Manly  suggests,  there 
is  here  no  incoherency  chargeable  to  B.      In  A,   exactly  as  in 

i  C,  III,  122. 

305 


36  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

B,  Langland  indulges  in  an  incidental  fling  at  bishops;  no  more 
in  one  case  than  in  the  other  were  they  to  go  to  Westminster  at 
all.  In  A,  Civil  gives  advice  how  each  steed  should  be  "dight;" 
deans  and  subdeans  will  be  used  "as  desterers," 

For  thei  schullen  beren  bisschops*  and  bringen  hem  to  reste; 

which  may  mean  anything  one  pleases,  except  the  implying  of  a 
tumultuous  journey  to  Westminster  or  anywhere  else.  Of  West- 
minster not  a  word ;  and  when,  in  version  A,  we  reach  that  place 
with  Fals  and  his  crew,  nothing  is  said  of  any  bishop  being  part 
of  the  troop.  In  B,  we  have  the  same  speech  of  Civil,  with  a  few 
more  details:  deans  and  subdeans  will  be  saddled  with  silver, 

To  bere  bischopes  aboute  ■  abrode  in  visytynge. 

As  this  fling  at  bishops  had,  in  both  texts,  nothing  to  do  with 
the  story,  the  author,  revising  his  poem  for  the  last  time,  sup- 
pressed it  entirely  in  text  C,  a  not  isolated  example  of  good  taste 
given  then  by  him. 

—  "Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  B  did  not  notice"  the  shifted  passage 
on  Robert  and  Restitution,  and  the  introduction  into  the  text  of 
the  names  of  the  wife  and  children  of  Piers,  at  a  place  (A,  VII, 
71-74)  where  they  interrupt  Piers's  speech  before  his  journey. 

This  has  been  answered  before. 

VI 

Professor  Manly,  it  will  be  remembered,  holds  that  the 
Visions  were  written  by  five  different  men ;  version  A  being  the 
work  of  three,  versions  B  and  C  of  one  each.  We  have  discussed 
his  theories  concerning  John  But  and  the  author  of  B,  this  last 
being  the  one  about  whom  he  took  most  pains.  Besides  the 
arguments  enumerated  above,  he  put  forth  some  more  concerning 
this  same  version;  but  as  they  apply  also  to  the  differences  of 
authorship  said  to  be  discernible  in  the  rest  of  the  work,  all  these 
can  be  discussed  together. 

These  arguments  are  drawn  from  differences  in  literary  merit, 
in  opinions,  meter,  and  dialect  noticeable  in  the  successive  ver- 
sions of  Piers  Plowman.     Those   differences  are,  according  to 

306 


Piers  Plowman  37 

Mr.  Manly,  so  considerable  that  it  is  impossible  to  explain  them 
"as  due  to  such  changes  as  might  occur  in  any  man's  mental 
qualities  and  views  of  life  in  the  course  of  thirty  or  thirty-five 
years,  the  interval  between  the  earliest  and  latest  versions."1  In 
other  words,  all  successive  versions  of  any  given  work,  or  any 
separate  part  therein,  showing  such  differences  as  we  find  in  Piers 
Plowman,  are  proved  by  experience  to  be  due  to  different  authors ; 
therefore  the  two  parts  of  A  (we  exclude  John  But  and  his  few 
lines)  and  the  versions  B  and  C  are,  in  spite  of  the  indications  to 
the  contrary  supplied  by  MSS,  and  of  all  corroborating  evidence, 
the  work  of  four  separate  authors. 

It  is  easy  to  show  that  this  is  not,  in  any  way,  a  telling  argu- 
ment. Not  only  have  the  differences  between  the  various  versions 
of  our  poem  been,  as  I  think,  greatly  exaggerated,  but,  taking 
them  at  Professor  Manly's  own  estimation,  they  would  prove,  in 
themselves,  nothing  at  all,  for  a  large  number  of  works  of  every 
date  and  from  every  country  can  be  quoted  offering  even  deeper 
differences,  and  differences  often  occurring  in  a  much  shorter 
space  of  time;  and  yet  the  whole  is  indisputably  the  work  of  one 
single  author,  who  had  simply  changed  his  mind,  or  his  manner, 
or  both,  or  was  better  inspired  at  one  time  than  at  another. 

The  differences  in  meter  and  dialect  need  not  detain  us  much. 
They  are  mentioned  "pour  m^moire,"  rather  than  discussed  by 
Mr.  Manly,  and  we  must  wait  till  the  case  is  put  forth  with  an 
attempt  at  demonstration.  We  do  not  think  that,  when  it  is,  it 
will  prove  at  all  a  difference  of  authorship.  Concerning  dialects, 
it  is  very  difficult  to  distinguish,  in  cases  like  this,  what  is  attribut- 
able to  the  author  and  what  to  the  scribe.  Mr.  Manly  tells  us 
that  a  careful  study  of  the  MSS  would  show  that,  "between  A,  B, 
and  C,  there  exist  dialectal  differences  incompatible  with  the  sup- 
position of  a  single  author.  This  can  easily  be  tested  in  the  case 
of  the  pronouns  and  the  verb  are"  (p.  34).  But  we  find  as  great 
differences  between  the  various  copies  of  the  same  version;  and 
shall  we  have  to  believe  that  each  copy  was  the  work  of  a  different 
poet?  Take  a  pronoun,  as  Mr.  Manly  suggests;  we  shall  find, 
for  example,  that  in  one  MS  of  version  C,  the  pronoun  she  appears 

i  Cambridge  History,  II,  p.  4. 

307 


38  J.    J.    JUSSEBAND 

as  50,  in  another  MS  of  the  same  version  as  hue,  in  another  as 
sche  and  scheo.1  Yet  the  first  two  MSS  not  only  give  the  same 
version,  but  belong  to  the  same  subclass  and  are  very  closely 
connected;  dialectal  forms  are  none  the  less  markedly  different.2 
The  excellent  Vernon  MS  of  A  has  southern  forms  which  do  not 
appear  in  other  MSS  of  the  same  version.  The  MS  79  at  Oriel 
College,  containing  text  B,  is  pure  Midland;  the  MS  of  the  same 
text,  Dd.  1.  17,  at  the  University  Library,  Cambridge,  offers 
northern  forms. 

Metrical  differences  tell  even  less,  not  only  because,  here  again, 
scribes  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  them  (we  have,  for 
example,  a  MS  of  A  whose  scribe  was  so  fond  of  alliteration  that 
he  often  modified  the  text  to  add,  against  all  rule,  a  fourth  allit- 
erating word3),  but  because,  if  we  admitted  that  changes  of  this 
sort  proved  differences  of  authorship,  we  would  have  to  admit 
that  two  different  Miltons  wrote  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise 
Regained*  and  that  37  different  Shakespeares  wrote  Shakespeare's 
37  plays.  "Let  us  first  take  the  point  of  metre,"  says  Dr.  Furni- 
vall  in  his  just-published  Life  of  the  great  dramatist,  "in  which 
Shakspere  was  changing  almost  play  by  play,  during  his  whole 
life."5  Prof.  Manly  states  that,  between  the  two  parts  of  A,  ad- 
mitted by  all  critics  to  have  been  written  at  some  years'  distance 
in  time,  there  are  notable  differences  "in  regard  to  run-on  lines 
and  masculine  endings."6  This  would  show  that  the  Tempest  can- 
not be  from  the  same  Shakespeare  as  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  since 
there  is  one  run-on  line  for  every  three  in  the  first,  and  one  for 
every  eighteen  in  the  second,  and  there  are  1,028  riming  lines  in 

1  MSS  Laud,  656,  Bodleian ;  Phillipps,  8, 231 ;  University  Library,  Cambridge,  Ff.  5.  35. 

2  A  strikjng  example  of  tbe  close  connection  between  these  two  MSS  of  the  same  version, 
and  also  of  the  persistence  of  scribes  in  adhering  to  their  own  private  dialectal  forms,  is 
given  by  Skeat,  Preface  of  C,  p.  xxix  (Early  Engl.  Text  Soc.) :  the  scribe  of  the  Phillipps 
MS  having  written  once  by  mistake  hue  instead  of  he,  the  scribe  of  the  Laud  MS  "actually 
followed  suit  by  substituting  his  favorite  form  30,  not  noticing  that  hue  was  wrong." 

3  MS  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  version  A ;  Skeat,  Preface  of  A,  p.  xxii. 

*"The  difference  in  kind  between  the  two  poems  is  signalised  in  certain  differences  in 
the  language  and  versification." — D.  Masson,  Milton's  Poetical  Works,  Introduction  to 
Paradise  Regained, 

5  Furnivall  and  Munro,  Shakespeare's  Life  and  Work,  1908,  p.  66.  Cf .  pp.  90, 114, 137,  147, 
and  the  tables,  p.  263. 

6  Cambridge  History,  II,  p.  18. 

308 


Piers  Plowman  39 

Love's  Labour's  Lost,  and  only  two  in  the  Tempest  (and  none  in 
Winter's  Tale) . 

Concerning  differences  of  literary  merit  and  mental  power, 
Prof.  Manly  declares  that  the  first  part  of  A  (episodes  of  Meed 
and  Piers)  is  the  best  in  the  whole  work ;  and  not  only  the  best,  for 
after  all  it  must  happen  to  any  author  that  one  of  his  poems  or 
cantos  is  his  best,  but  so  far  above  all  the  rest  as  to  imply  a  dif- 
ference of  authorship.  Those  first  eight  passus  are  remarkable, 
he  says,  for  their  "clearness  and  definiteness  and  structural  excel- 
lence;1' they  are  conspicuous  for  their  "unity  of  structure;"  the 
writer  never  "forgets  for  a  moment  the  relation  of  any  incident  to 

his  whole  plan Only  once  or  twice  does  he  interrupt  his 

narrative  to  express  his  own  views  or  feelings There  is 

nowhere  even  the  least  hint  of  any  personal  animosity  against  any 
class  of  men  as  a  class."  The  style  is  of  unparalleled  "pictur- 
esqueness  and  verve;"  the  art  of  composition  is  "one  of  the  most 
striking  features,"  of  this  portion  of  the  poem.1 

In  the  latter  part  of  A,  on  the  contrary,  that  is  the  Dowel  passus, 
and  in  the  additions  introduced  into  versions  B  and  C,  those  qual- 
ities disappear  to  a  large  extent;  we  have  much  more  "debate 
and  disquisition"  than  "vitalised  allegory"  (why  not?);  the 
author  is  interested  in  casuistry,  in  theological  problems,  predes- 
tination, etc.  (again,  why  not?);  the  "clearness  of  phrasing,  the 
orderliness  and  consecutiveness  of  thought  ....  are  entirely 
lacking.""  The  author  of  B  has  the  same  defects  to  an  even  more 
marked  degree;  he  is  incapable  of  "consecutive  thinking;"  his 
"point  of  view  is  frequently  and  suddenly  and  unexpectedly 
shifted ;  topics  alien  to  the  main  theme  intrude  because  of  the  use 
of  a  suggestive  word;"3  he,  too,  shows  interest  in  predestination 
(which  in  any  case  brings  him  near  one  of  the  supposed  authors 
of  A) ;  he  cannot  follow  his  plan  properly. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  no  such  wide  differences.  Great 
as  are  the  merits  of  the  first  part  of  A,  written  with  all  the  vigor 
and  vivacity  of  younger  manhood,  they  are  mixed  with  the  very 
kind  of  faults  Mr.  Manly  detects  in  the  second  part  and  in  the 
successive  versions.     Incoherencies  are  numerous  and  glaring;  the 

i  Ibid.,  pp.  1,  5, 11, 12.  2  pp.  17, 18.  3  p.  24. 

309 


40  J-    J-    JUSSERAND 

aptitude  to  start  off  on  a  new  track  because  a  mere  word  has  evoked 
a  new  thought  in  the  writer's  mind  is  remarkable,  and  in  this  we 
can  find  once  more  his  seal  and  signature,  the  proof  of  his  author- 
ship. None  of  the  stories  lead  to  anything,  to  anywhere,  nor  are 
in  any  way  concluded. 

Let  us  glance,  as  we  are  bidden,  at  the  first  part  of  version  A, 
beginning  with  passus  I.  The  dreamer  asks  a  "lovely  ladi,"  who 
turns  out  to  be  Holy  Church,  to  interpret  the  dream  of  the  two 
castles  and  the  field  full  of  folk,  which  he  has  had  in  the  prologue. 
The  Lady  answers  in  substance:  The  tower  on  this  toft  is  the 
place  of  abode  of  Truth,  or  God  the  father;  but  do  not  get  drunk. 
Why  drunk,  and  why  those  details  about  drunkenness  that  has 
caused  Lot's  sins,  the  nature  of  which  is  recalled?  The  word 
drink  having  come  under  the  pen  of  the  author,  he  started  off  on 
this  subject  and  made  it  the  principal  topic  (eight  lines)  in  Holy 
Church's  answer,  though  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  dream  she 
had  been  requested  to  interpret. 

The  dreamer  thanks  her  very  much,  and  asks  now  what  is  this 
money  that  these  men  are  treasuring  up  and  "so  fast  holden." 
The  Lady  makes  a  somewhat  rambling  answer,  both  question  and 
answer  being  equally  unexpected  and  irrelevant.  The  "feld  ful 
of  folk"  in  the  prologue  had  been  represented  as  filled  with  men 
who  ploughed  the  land,  prayed,  glosed  on  the  gospel,  overfed 
themselves,  pleaded  before  the  courts,  traded,  did,  in  fact,  all  sorts 
of  things,  except  hold  fast  "inoneye  on  pis  molde." 

What  the  Lady  should  have  explained  was  not  hard  to  make 
clear.  The  subject  of  the  dream  in  the  prologue  was  nothing  else 
than  what  the  author  must  have  seen  in  reality  a  number  of  times, 
namely,  the  world  as  represented  in  a  mystery  play,  just  as  we 
may  see  it  pictured  in  the  MS  of  the  Valenciennes  Passion:1  on 
one  side,  God's  Tower  or  Palace;  on  the  opposite  side,  the  devil's 
castle,  "pat  dungen  ....  pat  dredf ul  is  of  siht,"  says  Langland ; 
between  the  two,  a  vast  space  for  the  various  scenes  in  man's  life 
or  in  the  story  of  his  salvation.  It  is  simple,  but  the  Lady  loses 
her  way,  and  the  only  people  she  describes  are  those  that  just 
happen  not  to  have  been  there. 

1  Reproduced,  e.  g.,  in  my  Shakespeare  in  France,  p.  63. 

310 


Piers  Plowman  41 

Asked  by  the  dreamer,  who  has  apparently  ceased  to  care  about 
the  people  in  his  dream,  how  he  could  be  saved,  the  Lady  advises 
him  to  think  only  of  Truth;  clerks  "scholde  techen"  what  Truth 
is.  But  this  word  scholde  has  caused  the  author's  mind  to 
wander,  and  instead  of  enlightening  her  hearer  on  his  duties,  the 
Lady  begins  to  describe  what  other  sorts  of  people  "should"  do, 
and  especially  a  sort  very  far  removed  from  the  dreamer's  condition, 
namely  kings  and  knights;  the  Lady  informs  us  that  they 
"scholde  kepen  hem  bi  Reson."  Kings  in  general  remind  her  of 
King  David  in  particular,  and  David  and  his  knights  remind  her 
of  Crist,  who  is  the  king  of  heaven,  and  of  angels  who  are  his 
knights;  we  have  therefore  something  about  angels,  some  of 
whom  are  good  and  others  are  bad,  as  witness  Lucifer  about  whom 
we  now  get  various  details. 

The  poem  continues  as  it  began;  the  experience  might  be 
prolonged  indefinitely.  The  dreamer  insisting  to  know  what  is 
Truth,  the  Lady  says  that  it  consists  in  loving  God  more  than 
oneself,  but  the  word  love  having  evoked  a  new  train  of  thoughts, 
the  poet  descants  now  on  the  necessity  of  having  "reupe  on  pe 
pore;"  if  you  do  not  "love  pe  pore"  you  cannot  be  saved,  even  if 
you  have  been  as  chaste  as  a  child ;  but  the  word  chaste  starting 
a  new  idea,  the  author  branches  off  on  this  topic :  to  be  chaste  is  not 
enough;  "moni  chapeleyns  ben  chast,"  yet  lack  charity,  and  so  on. 

None  of  the  visions,  episodes,  or  stories  in  these  passus  have 
any  ending,  nor  are  continued  by  what  comes  next.  After  the 
field  full  of  folk,  interpreted  in  the  way  we  have  seen  by  Holy 
Church,  after  the  dreamer's  appeal  to  know  how  he  can  be  saved, 
we  have  the  story  of  Meed  and  of  her  intended  nuptials  with  Fals. 
A  question  of  the  dreamer  how  to  know  "the  Fals,"  of  which  Fals 
not  a  word  had  been  said  before,  is  all  there  is  of  "structural  excel- 
lence" in  the  connecting  of  the  two  episodes.  Theology  objects 
to  Meed's  marriage;  the  case  is  brought  before  the  King  who 
wants  to  give  her  hand  to  the  Knight  Conscience.  Conscience 
refuses,  makes  a  speech,  and  consents  at  last  to  kiss  Meed,  provided 
Reason  agrees  he  should.  Reason  is  brought  forth,  makes  a  speech 
on  quite  different  topics,  and  we  never  hear  any  more  of  the  kiss 
or  the  marriage.     "E>ene  Pees  com  to  parlement;"  a  new  episode 

311 


42  J.    J.    JUSSEKAND 

begins,  the  word  "p>ene"  being  all  that  connects  it  with  the  pre- 
vious one.     And  so  on,  till  the  end. 

Worthy  of  the  profoundest  admiration  as  Langland  is,  he 
deserves  it  for  qualities  quite  different  from  that  "structural 
excellence"  which  Professor  Manly  thinks  he  discovers  in  version 
A  and  in  no  other.  In  this  version,  in  version  B,  and  in  version 
C — the  same  combination  of  qualities  and  defects  denoting  the 
same  man — the  poet's  mind  is  frequently  rambling  and  his  poem 
recalls  rather  the  mists  on  "Malverne  hulles"  than  the  straight 
lines  of  the  gardens  at  Versailles. 

Another  difference  mentioned  by  Professor  Manly  is  that  only 
"once  or  twice"  the  author  of  the  first  part  of  A  interrupts  his 
narrative  to  express  his  own  views.  Here  again  the  difference 
with  the  other  versions  is  remarkably  exaggerated.  We  find  in 
A,  such  passages  as  those  beginning:  "Bote  god  to  alle  good  folk 
.  .  .  ."  Ill,  55  j1  "Bote  Salamon  pe  Sage  .  .  .  ."  Ill,  84  (the 
author  interferes  in  these  two  cases  to  give  the  lie  to  his  own 
personages);  "I  warne  ^ou,  alle  werk-men  .  .  .  ."  VII,  306; 
"^e  Legistres  and  Lawyers  .   .   .   ."  VIII,  62;    "For-thi  I  rede 

^ow  renkes  (creatures)    ....  And  nomeliche,  $e  Meires " 

VIII,  168.  Here  are,  in  any  case,  five  examples  instead  of  "one 
or  two."  The  Langland  who  wrote  A  resembled  too  much,  in 
reality,  the  Langland  who  wrote  B  and  C  to  be  able  to  resist  the 
temptation  to  interfere,  interrupt,  and  make  direct  appeals  to  his 
compatriots — to  you  mayors,  you  lords,  you  workmen — whom  he 
wanted  so  much  to  convert.  All  these  Langlands,  so  strangely 
similar,,  cared  little  for  art,  as  compared  with  moral  improve- 
ment. 

We  have  been  told  also  that  there  is  nowhere  in  A  "even  the 
least  hint  of  any  personal  animosity  against  any  class  of  men  as  a 

1  The  intervention  of  the  author  in  this  case  interrupts  the  story  of  Meed  who  has  just 
been  heard  by  her  confessor,  and  has  been  promised  absolution  if  she  gives  a  glass  window 
to  the  church.  The  author  expresses  his  personal  indignation  at  such  doings,  and  beseeches 
"you,  lordynges,"  not  to  act  thus;  lords  make  him  think  of  mayors,  and  the  word  mayor 
recalls  to  him  the  duties  of  such  dignitaries;  in  his  usual  rambling  fashion,  the  poet  passes 
on  accordingly  to  the  duty  for  mayors  to  punish  "on  pillories  "  untrustworthy  "Brewesters, 
Bakers,  Bochers  and  Cookes; "  and  when  we  return  at  last  to  Meed,  as  the  author  had  just 
been  speaking  of  mayors,  he  makes  her  address  "  pe  meir,"  though  none  had  been  mentioned, 
and  there  was  none  there  before.  Here  again  there  is  no  cause  for  praising  A's  "structural 
excellence." 

312 


Piers  Plowman  43 

class."  In  this,  too,  I  must  confess  I  do  not  see  great  differences 
between  any  of  the  Visions;  the  same  deep  antipathies  appear  in 
A  as  elsewhere:  scorn  for  idle  people  of  whatever  sort,  strong 
animosity  against  lawyers  carried  to  the  point  of  absolute  unfair- 
ness,1 contempt  for  pardoners,  pilgrims,  and  all  those  who  think 
that,  by  performing  rites,  they  can  be  saved,  scorn  and  disgust  for 
friars,  who  are  constantly  mentioned  with  contumely,  and  certainly 
not  as  individuals  but  as  a  class;  the  whole  lot  of  them  ("all  pe 
foure  ordres,"  the  poet  is  careful  to  say)  are,  like  the  lawyers, 
condemned  wholesale.2 

If  the  merits  of  the  first  part  of  A  have  been,  as  I  consider, 
exaggerated,  so  have  the  demerits  of  the  second  part  and  of  the  two 
revisions.  The  second  part  of  A  has,  it  is  true,  more  dull  places 
than  the  first:  no  author  is  constantly  equal  to  his  best  work. 
But  even  in  this  portion  of  the  poem,  we  find  passages  of  admir- 
able beauty,  such  as  Langland  alone  produced  in  these  days ;  the 
one,  for  example,  where  he  tells  us  of  his  doubts,  and  of  his  anguish 
at  his  inability  to  reconcile  the  teachings  of  the  Church  with  his 
idea  of  justice.  Aristotle — "who  wroujte  betere  ?  " — is  held  to  be 
damned;  and  Mary  Magdalen  —  "who  mijte  do  wers?" — as  well 
as  the  penitent  thief,  with  his  whole  life  of  sin  behind  him,  are 
saved.  Happy  those  who  do  not  try  to  know  so  much,  who  do 
not  feel  those  torments;  happy  the  "pore  peple,  as  plou^men"  who 
can  (and  what  a  grand  line!)  — 

Percen  with  a  pater-nostev    the  paleis  of  hevene.3 

The  value  of  the  most  picturesque  and  humorsome  scenes  in 
the  rest  of  the  poem  fades  in  comparison  with  passages  of  this 

iThe  author  cannot  admit  that  a  lawyer's  work  deserves  a  salary  as  well  as  any  other 
kind  of  work;  he  would  like  them  to  plead  "for  love  of  ur  Lord,"  and  not  for  "pons  and 
poundes"  (Prol.  85). 

2  I  font  pere  Freres'  all  pe  Foure  Ordres, 
Prechinge  pe  peple"  for  profyt  of  heore  wombes. 

—A,  Prol.  55. 

Friars  receive  Fals;  they  open  their  house  to  Lyer  and  keep  "him  as  a  Frere"  (II,  206); 
Meed's  confessor  who  is  a  model  of  low  rascality  is  "i-copet  as  a  Frere"  (III,  36) ;  Envy  wears 
the  "fore  slevys"  of  "a  Freris  frokko"  (V,  64,  etc.).  The  fact  that  a  copy  of  Piers  Ploivman 
belonged  to  a  friars'  convent  has  no  bearing  on  the  question ;  Wyclifite  Bibles  were  also  found 
in  convents. 

3  A,  end  of  passus  X. 

313 


44  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

sort.     Others,  of  a  different  stamp,  might  be  quoted,  such  as  the 
brief  and  striking  portrait  of  Wit,  the  model  man  of  learning: 

He  was  long  and  lene"  to  loken  on  ful  symple, 
Was  no  pride  on  his  apparail"  ne  no  povert  noper, 
Sad  of  his  semblaunt"  and  of  softe  speche.1 

What  has  been  said  of  the  differences  between  the  two  parts  of  A 
cannot  but  be  emphatically  repeated  for  what  concerns  those  sup- 
posed to  exist  between  A  and  B.  Given  the  time  elapsed,  as  shown 
by  the  political  allusions,  those  differences,  if  any  there  be,  are  far 
from  striking.  A  remarkable  point  deserves  attention  at  the  start. 
As  acknowledged  by  Professor  Manly  himself,  the  author  of  B 
makes  excellent,  vivid,  and  picturesque  additions  to  the  first  two 
episodes  (stories  of  Meed  and  of  Piers  Plowman),  and  introduces 
abstract,  discursive,  and  scarcely  coherent  ones  in  the  Dowel  part ; 
in  other  words  B  is,  from  this  point  of  view,  an  exact  counterpart 
of  A,  the  picture  being  simply  drawn  on  a  larger  scale.  It  is 
difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  men  so  similarly  impressed 
and  influenced  by  similar  topics  were  not  improbably  the  same  man. 

In  reality,  defects  and  qualities  bring  the  three  versions  very 
near  one  another.  Professor  Manly  tells  us  that  the  author  of  B 
is  in  "helpless  subjection  to  the  suggestions  of  the  words  he  hap- 
pens to  use;"  so  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  author  of  A.  The  author 
of  B  "loses  sight  of  the  plan  of  the  work;"  so  does  A.  B,  Mr. 
Manly  continues,  shows  perhaps  as  much  power  as  A  in  "visualising 
detail;"  but  he  is  "incapable  of  visualising  a  group  or  of  keeping  his 
view  steady  enough  to  imagine  and  depict  a  developing  action."2 
One  may  be  permitted  to  ask  what  is  the  crowd  which  B  ought 
to  have  described,  and  which  he  failed  to  visualise?  Of  the  per- 
fection of  his  power  of  observation  and  the  picturesqueness  of  his 
style  some  examples  have  been  given ;  many  others  might  be  added; 
and  the  famous  rat-parliament,  one  of  the  most  characteristic  and 
best  "visualised"  scenes  in  the  poem,  is  present  in  everybody's 
memory. 

As  for  his  incapacity  to  understand  the  development  of  an 
action,  B  shows  certainly,  by  the  suppression  of  Wrong  as  father 

1  A,  IX,  110.  2  Cambridge  History,  p.  32. 

314 


Piers  Plowman  45 

of  Meed,  the  giving  of  "Amendes"  to  her  as  a  mother,  and  the 
other  modifications  in  the  passage,  that  he  well  understood  how 
an  action  should  develop.  C  shows  it  even  better  by  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  lines  telling,  in  previous  versions,  how  Piers  tore  up 
his  bull  of  pardon  out  of  spite,  and  simply  because  contradiction 
had  irritated  him.  This  is  one  of  the  grandest,  if  not  the  grandest 
scene  in  the  poem,  the  most  memorable,  even  for  us  to-day,  the 
culminating  point  of  the  work.  "Pleyn  pardoun"  is  granted  to 
ploughmen  and  other  poor  people  who  have  led  hard  lives  on  this 
earth  without  murmuring ;  it  is  the  recompense  of  their  humility ; 
the  Lord  gives  it  to  them  "for  love  of  heore  lowe  hertes."1  Piers, 
can  we  see  your  pardon? 

And  Pers  at  his  preyere-  the  pardon  unfoldeth, 
And  I  bi-hynden  hem  bothe-  bi-heold  al  the  bulle. 
In  two  lines  hit  lay  and  not  a  lettre  more, 
And  was  i-written  riht  thus-  in  witnesse  of  treuthe: 

Et  qui  bona  egeruwt  ibunt  in  vitam  eternam; 

Qui  veto  mala,  in  ignem  eternum. 

It  is  only  in  revising  his  text  for  the  last  time  that  the  author 
felt  how  greatly  improved  the  whole  episode  would  be  if  cut  short 
here,  that  the  action  was  now  fully  developed,  and  that  any  addi- 
tion, and  especially  the  tearing  of  the  bull  by  Piers  whose  main 
treasure  it  should  have  been,  simply  spoilt  it.  He  therefore  sup- 
pressed this  incident,  twenty-six  lines  in  all,  and  having  briefly 
shown  by  the  priest's  remark  that  such  a  teaching  was  too  high 
for  vulgar  ecclesiastics,  he  tells  us  he  awoke  as  the  sun  was  setting 
in  the  south,  and  he  found  himself 

Meteles  and  money les*  on  Malverne  hulles.2 

If  the  vague  subject  of  Dowel,  Dobet,  Dobest,  inspires  the 
author  of  B  and  C  with  as  much  rambling  as  the  author  of  the 
second  part  of  A,  it  inspires  him,  too,  with  several  of  those  splen- 
did touches  of  eloquence  and  feeling  which  also  shine  in  that  same 
second    part — and    nowhere   else   in   the   literature   of   the   day. 

1  A,  VIII,  87  ff.  2  c,  X,  295. 

315 


46  J-    J-    JUSSERAND 

There  we.  find,  for  example,  added  in  version  B,  the  incomparable 
prayer  to  the  Creator,  in  passus  XIV: 

Ac  pore  peple,  thi  prisoneres*  lorde,  in  the  put  of  myschief, 
Conforte  tho  creatures-  that  moche  care  suffren 
Thorw  derth,  thorw  drouth*  alle  her  dayes  here, 
Wo  in  wynter  tymes*  for  wantyng  of  clothes, 
And  in  somer  tyme  selde'  soupen  to  the  fulle; 
Comforte  thi  careful*  Cryst,  in  thi  ryche, 

For  how  thow  confortest  alle  creatures*  clerkes  bereth  witnesse, 
Convertimini  ad  me  et  salvi  eritis.1 

In  version  B  also  we  find,  for  the  first  time,  the  great  passus  on 
"Crystes  passioun  and  penaunce,"2  with  the  author  awakening  at 
the  end,  to  the  sound  of  Easter  bells,  not  saddened  and  anxious,  as 
formerly  while  the  sun  was  going  down  on  Malvern  hills,  but 
cheered  and  joyful  on  the  morning  of  the  Resurrection.  It  is 
difficult  to  read  such  passages,  so  full  of  fervor,  so  sincere,  and  so 
eloquent,  without  thinking  of  Dante  or  Milton — unless  one  chooses 
to  think  of  Langland  alone. 

VII 

Studying  text  C  apart  from  the  others,  Professor  Manly  points 
out  certain  traits  special  to  it  and  marking  it,  he  believes,  as  the 
work  of  a  separate  author.  Two  examples  are  quoted  by  him  of 
"  C's  failure  to  understand  B"  (p.  33) ;  other  instances,  we  are  told, 
might  be  given,  but  these  are  doubtless  the  most  telling  ones.  The 
first  example  consists  in  a  comparison  of  11.  11-16  in  the  prologue  of 
B  with  the  similar  expanded  passage  forming  11.  9-18  in  C,  pas- 
sus I.  Professor  Manly  considers  the  picture  entirely  spoilt.  Be 
it  so;  the  case,  as  we  shall  see,  would  be  far  from  a  unique  one; 
more  than  one  author  spoilt,  in  his  old  age,  the  work  of  his  youth. 
But  it  is  not  certain  that  it  is  so,  and  many,  I  think,  would  not 
willingly  lose  the  new  line  added  there  to  broaden  the  spectacle 
offered  to  the  view  of  the  dreamer  who  sees  before  him: 

Al  the  welthe  of  this  worlde*  and  the  woo  bothe. 

The  second  example  is  the  change  introduced  in  11.  160-66  of 
the  Prologue  in  B  (episode  of  the  Rat  Parliament).     The  "raton 

i  B,  XIV,  174.  2  B,  XVIII ;  C,  XXI. 

316 


Piers  Plowman  47 

of  renon"  suggests  that  a  bell  be  hung  to  the  neck  of  the  cat: 
there  are  certain  beings  in  "the  cite  of  London,"  who  bear  bright 
collars  and  go  as  they  please  "bothe  in  wareine  and  in  waste;"  if 
there  was  a  bell  to  their  collar,  men  would  know  of  their  coming 
and  run  away  in  time.  Clearly,  according  to  Mr.  Manly,  those 
beings,  those  "segges,"  are  dogs,  and  C  made  a  grievous  mistake 
in  supposing  them  men;  he  cannot  therefore  be  the  author  of  B. 

But  in  reality  they  were  men.  C  made  no  mistake,  and,  on 
the  contrary,  improved  the  passage.  The  allusions  were  inco- 
herent in  B.  What  were  those  beings,  living  in  London,  roaming 
in  warrens,  and  wearing  collars,  whom  if  a  bell  were  added  to 
their  collars,  men  would  be  able  to  avoid? 

Men  my5te  wite  where  thei  went*   and  awei  renne. 

The  author  of  C  very  justly  felt  that  the  passage  should  be  made 
clearer;  he  had,  of  course,  never  intended  really  to  mean  dogs 
(from  which  people  are  not  accustomed  to  run  away)  but  men, 
those  very  "knyjtes  and  squiers"  whom  he  now  names  for  our 
clearer  understanding,  and  who  had  taken  then  to  wearing  costly 
gold  collars — a  well-known  fashion  of  the  period — being  them- 
selves the  very  sort  of  "segges"  the  poorer  people  might  have 
reason  to  fear.  He  therefore  names  them  and  no  one  else,  and  is 
careful  to  suppress  the  allusion  in  B  to  their  appearing  so  adorned 
"in  wareine  and  in  waste."  There  was  no  "misunderstanding" 
on  the  part  of  0 ;  just  the  reverse ;  and  he  deserves  thanks  instead 
of  blame. 

Considering  this  version  as  a  whole,  Professor  Manly  describes 
the  author  as  having  been,  so  it  seems  to  him,  "a  man  of  much 
learning,  true  piety,  and  of  genuine  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the 
nation,  but  unimaginative,  cautious,  and  a  very  pronounced 
pedant."  This  amounts  to  saying,  as  everybody  will  agree,  that 
C  is  the  work  of  an  older  man  than  A  and  B,  which  simply  con- 
firms the  point  of  view  I  defend.  Increasing  piety,  more  care  for 
politics,  more  cautiousness,  less  imagination,  a  greater  show  of 
learning  (in  the  last  edition  he  gave  of  his  Essays,  Montaigne 
added  about  two  hundred  Latin  quotations1)  are  so  many  charac- 
teristics of  age,  none  of  them  implying  a  difference  of  authorship. 

1  P.  Villey,  Les  sources  des  Essaisde  Montaigne,  Paris,  1908,  Vol.  I,  p.  402. 

317 


48  J.    J-    JUSSEEAND 

It  is  an  untoward  circumstance  for  Mr.  Manly's  theory  that  his 
successive  writers  seem  to  have  been  each  one  older  than  his 
predecessor,  just  as  if  the  same  man  had  been  living  to  revise  his 
own  work. 

Concerning  the  textual  changes  and  additions  in  C,  Mr.  Manly 
declares  that  "they  are  numerous  and  small,  and  not  in  pursuance 
of  any  well-defined  plan.  There  are  multitudinous  alterations  of 
single  words  and  phrases,  sometimes  to  secure  better  alliteration, 
sometimes  to  get  rid  of  an  archaic  word,  sometimes  to  modify  an 
opinion,  but  often  for  no  discoverable  reason,  and  occasionally 
resulting  in  positive  injury  to  the  style  or  the  thought"  (p.  30). 
Precisely ;  and  this  is  what  an  author,  in  the  evening  of  life,  would 
do  for  his  own  work  and  what  no  one  else  would ;  a  reviser  would 
have  undertaken  the  work  for  some  cause  and  with  "a  well-defined 
plan."  At  times,  says  Professor  Manly,  "one  is  tempted  to  think 
that  passages  were  rewritten  for  the  mere  sake  of  rewriting." 
Just  so,  and  who,  except  the  author  himself,  would  take  so  much 
trouble?  An  absolutely  parallel  case  is  offered  by  no  less  a  man 
than  Ronsard,  who  revised  his  whole  works  and  gave  one  last  edi- 
tion of  them  in  1584,  the  year  before  his  death.  The  changes 
introduced  by  him  are  of  such  a  nature  that  they  can  be  described 
as  follows:  "There  are  multitudinous  alterations  of  single  words 
and  phrases,  sometimes  to  secure  better  [cadence],  sometimes  to 
get  rid  of  an  archaic  word,  sometimes  to  modify  an  opinion,  but 
often  for  no  discoverable  reason,  and  occasionally  resulting  in 
positive  injury  to  the  style  or  the  thought,"  this  latter  mishap 
being  far  more  frequent  with  Ronsard  than  with  Langland,  and 
the  friends  of  the  French  poet  deploring,  in  his  own  day,  his 
unfortunate  changes.1 

Mr.  Manly  considers  that  the  author  of  C  shows  not  only  more 
pedantry  in  increasing  the  number  of  quotations,  but  more  learn- 
ing: "C  is  a  better  scholar  than  either  the  continuator  of  A  (who 
translated  non  mecaberis  by  'slay  not'  and  tabescebam  by  'I  said 
nothing')  or  B  (who  accepted  without  comment  the  former  of 
these  errors)."  One  might  well  answer  that  there  is  nothing 
extraordinary  in  a  student  knowing  more  in  his  later  years  than 

1  See,  o.  g.,  Pasquier,  Recherches  de  la  France,  Book  VI,  chap.  vii. 

318 


Piers  Plowman  49 

in  his  youth.  But,  in  reality,  scholarship  is  here  out  of  the 
question,  and  the  utmost  that  can  be  said,  in  view  of  the  knowledge 
displayed  everywhere  else  by  the  same  writer,  is  that  when  he 
wrote  mecaberis  and  tabescebam,  the.  analogy  of  sounds  evoked  in 
his  mind  the  thought  of  mactabis  and  tacebam.  Revising  his  text 
he  noticed  one  of  these  misprints  and  forgot  the  other;  but  he 
noticed  that  one  too  in  his  next  edition  and  corrected  it:  exactly 
what  could  be  expected  from  a  poet,  who  draws,  in  version  A,  two 
lists  of  the  Seven  Sins,  both  wrong,  and  corrects  them  when 
writing  B,  adding,  however,  in  this  version  another  list  of  the 
Seven  Sins,  equally  wrong.  It  cannot  certainly  be  pretended  that 
our  author  was  a  man  of  minute  accuracy,  for,  as  Mr.  Skeat  has 
observed,  "he  cites  St.  Matthew  when  he  means  St.  Luke,  and 
St.  Gregory  when  he  means  St.  Jerome,"1  which  is  worse  than  to 
have  left  uncorrected,  or  even  to  have  written,  tabescebam  instead 
of  tacebam  and  Fals  instead  of  Favel.  If  one  of  the  versions  had 
shown  minute  accuracy  throughout,  that  would  have  told,  in  a 
way,  for  the  theory  of  multiple  authorship;  but  we  find  nothing 
of  the  kind,  and  the  last  list  of  the  Seven  Sins  is  left  in  C 
definitively  wrong. 

VIII 

Such  is,  as  I  take  it,  the  truth  concerning  the  supposed  differ- 
ences between  the  three  versions.  But  let  us,  as  a  counter 
experiment,  admit  that  it  is  not  so,  and  let  us  accept  all  those  dif- 
ferences at  Professor  Manly's  own  estimation.  In  order  that  they 
prove  anything,  experience  must  have  shown  that  whenever  similar 
ones  are  detected  in  the  various  revisions  or  the  various  parts  of 
a  work,  a  multiple  authorship  is  certain. 

To  say  nothing  of  Chaucer  and  of  his  tales  of  the  Clerk,  the 
Miller,  and  the  Parson,  we  would  have,  if  this  theory  held  good, 
to  admit  that  the  first  three  acts  of  Hamlet  were  written  by  one 
Shakespeare,  and  the  two  last  by  another — an  obvious  fact:  note 
the  differences  of  merit,  so  much  genius  and  so  little,  the  glaring 
discrepancies  between  the  two  parts,  Hamlet  slim  and  elegant, 
the  "mould  of  fashion"  in  the  first  acts,  fat  and  asthmatic  in  the 

i  Preface  of  B,  p.  xiv  (E.  E.  T.  S.). 

319 


50  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

last;  remember  our  being  told  that  Hamlet  has  "foregone  all  cus- 
toms of  exercise"  since  Laertes  left,  and  later  that,  since  Laertes 
went,  he  has  been  "in  continual  practice;"  Laertes  himself,  a 
brave  and  honorable  young  man  in  the  first  acts,  a  cowardly  mur- 
derer at  the  end,  and  so  on.  As  Professor  Manly  says  concerning 
the  separate  poet  to  whom  he  attributes  the  second  part  of  A,  the 
author  of  the  latter  part  of  the  play  "  tried  to  imitate  the  previous 
writer,  but  succeeded  only  superficially,  because  he  had  not  the 
requisite  ability  as  a  writer,  and  because  he  failed  to  understand 
what  were  the  distinctive  features  in  the  method  of  his  model."1 
It  even  seems,  at  times,  as  if  the  author  of  the  two  last  acts  had 
never  read  the  three  first:  dual  authorship  should  therefore  be 
held  as  more  than  proved. 

The  whole  story  of  literature  will  have  to  be  rewritten:  strong 
doubts  will  be  entertained  whether  the  revised  version  of  the 
Essays  of  1588  is  really  by  Montaigne,  the  differences  with  the 
former  ones  offering  some  remarkable  analogies  with  those  pointed 
out  in  Piers  Plowman.2  There  will  be  a  question  as  to  the  first 
part  of  Don  Quixote  being  by  the  same  Cervantes  as  the  last,3 
and  Paradise  Regained  by  the  same  Milton  as  Paradise  Lost. 
But  this  is  nothing:  here  is  a  grand  poem,  of  great  originality, 
full  of  love  and  adventures,  revealing  withal  the  highest  aims;  a 
masterpiece  received  at  once  as  such  and  ever  since.  And  we  have 
also  a  revision,  the  work  obviously  of  a  feebler  hand,  of  a  less 
gifted  genius,  a  cautious  man,  very  pedantic.  All  that  was  best 
and  most  original  in  the  first  text  has  been  suppressed  or  toned 
down;  the  subject  is  modern,  yet  we  now  find  that  the  character  of 

1  Cambridge  History,  p.  17. 

2  In  the  first  edition  of  the  Essays  (to  quote  an  opinion  not  at  all  expressed  in  view  of 
the  present  discussion,  as  it  dates  from  1897)  the  thought  of  Montaigne  "  est  hardie  dans 
l'expression;  elle  a  le  ton  haut  et  r6solu  de  celui  qui  s'6mancipe.  Plus  tard,  au  contraire, 
elle  baissera  la  voix,  comme  on  la  baisse  pour  dire  des  choses  graves  dont  on  sait  la  portee." 
In  his  same  last  version,  Montaigne  "disjoint  ses  raisonnements, coupe  le  fil  de  ses  deduc- 
tions, en  y  intercalant  des  remarques  etrangeres  ;  la  pens6e  primitive  se  morcele  ainsi  et  se 

dfeagrege Son  livre  est  devenu  pour  Montaigne  une  sorte  de  tapisserie  de  Penelope, 

qu'il  ne  defait  certes  pas,  car  il  retranche  peu,  mais  dont  il  rel&che  les  mailles,  y  travaillant 
toujours  sans  l'achever  jamais." — Paul  Bonnefon,  in  Julleville's  Histoire  de  la  Literature 
Francaise,  III,  454,  468. 

3"A  certain  undertone  of  melancholy  has  been  perceived  in  his  second  part At 

whiles  he  moralise[s]  with  that  touch  of  sadness  natural  to  a  man  of  many  years  and 
trials,  for  whom  life  is  only  a  retrospect."— T.  Fitzmaurice-Kelly,  Introduction  to  his  reprint 
of  Shelton's  translation  of  Don  Quixote,  London,  1896,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  xxiv. 

320 


Piers  Plowman  51 

the  hero  has  been  so  remodeled  as  to  recall  Achilles;  other  per- 
sonages are  so  modified  as  to  resemble  Hector,  Nestor,  Patrocles. 
Here  are  indeed  differences!  Yet  we  should  be  wrong  in  assum- 
ing that  the  Gerusalemme  Liberata  and  the  Gerusalemme  Con- 
quistata  are  the  work  of  several  Tassos. 

Here  is  another  work,  and  the  analogy  is  even  closer;  it  is  an 
English  masterpiece.  It  appeared  in  one  volume,  full  of  the  most 
interesting  and  best  "visualised"  scenes,  every  incident  so  well 
presented  and  so  true  to  life  as  to  be  unforgettable,  the  book 
attaining  at  once  an  immense  popularity,  being  translated  into 
every  language,  and  keeping  to  this  day  its  hold  on  readers 
throughout  the  world.  We  are  confronted  with  two  continuations. 
The  earliest  is  a  weak  imitation  of  the  first  work,  the  visual  power 
has  diminished ;  strange  happenings  of  the  usual  kind  are  expected 
to  make  up  for  the  lack  of  better  qualities ;  it  is  impossible  to  stop 
reading  the  first  part  when  once  begun,  it  is  difficult  to  read  the 
second  to  its  end.  In  the  next  continuation,  the  differences  are 
yet  deeper,  the  author  makes  faint  attempts  to  connect  his  work, 
by  allusion,  with  the  first  one,  but  all  has  become  vague  and  alle- 
gorical ;  theological  mists  have  replaced  tangible  realities.  Afraid 
apparently  of  detection,  the  author  of  this  part  goes  so  far  as  to  pre- 
tend that  the  first  one  was  "allegorical,"  though  also  "historical": 
a  barefaced  slander  on  the  original  work.  The  new  part  is  full  of 
rambling  disquisitions  on  man  and  his  duties,  on  atheism,  and  on 
Providence,  with  an  imaginary  journey  to  the  world  of  spirits  and 
a  visit  to  Satan:  "Here,  I  say,  I  found  Satan,  keeping  his  court  or 
camp,  we  may  call  it  which  we  please."  The  conclusion  of  the 
book  is,  that  "a  great  superintendency  of  divine  Providence  in  the 
minutest  affairs  of  this  world,"  and  the  "manifest  existence  of  the 
invisible  world"  have  been  demonstrated.  A  difference  of  author- 
ship is  the  more  obvious  that  there  was  not  between  the  publica- 
tions of  these  three  volumes,  anonymous  all  of  them,  a  lapse  of 
years  allowing  the  author  to  become,  so  to  say,  a  different  man: 
it  did  not  take  two  years  for  the  three  to  appear. 

Yet,  for  all  that,  the  three  were  the  work  of  the  same  writer, 
and  the  titles  he  gave  to  them  were :  Life  and  strange  surprising 
Adventures  of  Robinson  Crusoe — Farther  Adventures  of  Robin- 

321 


52  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

son  Crusoe — Serious  Reflections  .  ...  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  with 
his  Vision  of  the  Angelick  World.  The  first  part  appeared  in 
1719,  the  last  in  1720.  Shall  we  have  to  believe  in  three  different 
Defoes? 

IX 

I  mentioned  at  the  outset  that  all  the  indications  in  the  MSS, 
whether  titles  of  the  different  parts,  colophons,  or  notes  added  by 
former  day  owners,  agreed  in  showing  that  we  had  to  do  with  a 
single  work,  the  work  of  a  single  author;  none  to  the  contrary  being 
discernible.  One  more  connecting  link  between  the  three  versions 
remains  to  be  noticed. 

At  various  places  in  each,  and  with  more  abundance  as  time 
passed,  the  author  gave  some  details  about  himself,  his  train  of 
thoughts,  and  his  manner  of  life.  All  these  details  are  simple, 
plain,  clear,  most  of  them  of  no  interest  whatever,  if  untrue;  they 
are  not  meant  to  show  the  poet  to  advantage,  but  have,  on  the 
contrary,  often  the  tone  of  a  confession :  video  meliora  proboque, 
deteriora  sequor.  Localities  are  mentioned  with  a  precision  and 
definiteness  unequaled  in  the  ample  dream-literature  of  that  period, 
where  poets  usually  go  to  sleep  by  the  side  of  an  anonymous  brook, 
in  a  nameless  country.  Here  two  regions,  one  a  very  unusual  one 
in  poetry,  are  named  so  as  to  draw  special  attention,  Malvern  with 
her  hills,  her  mists,  and  the  vast  plain  at  the  foot  of  the  slopes; 
London,  with  its  cathedral  of  many  chantries,  its  great  people 
wearing  bright  collars,  its  poorer  ones  in  their  "cots,"  its  principal 
thoroughfares  and  suburbs,  Cornhill,  Cheapside,  Cock  Lane, 
Garlickhithe,  Tyburn,  South wark,  Shoreditch,  where  lives  "dame 
Emme,"  Westminster  with  the  king's  palace  and  the  law  courts. 
The  allusions  to  Welshmen  confirm  the  inference  that  Malvern  is 
not  a  name  chosen  at  random,  as  the  author  expresses  such  ideas 
as  would  occur  to  a  man  of  the  Welsh  border.  They  are  natural 
in  such  a  one,  and  would  be  much  less  so  in  a  Kentish  or  Middle- 
sex man.  There  is  in  Chaucer  one  mention  of  Wales:  it  is  to 
describe  it  as  the  refuge  of  Christians  during  the  period  of  the 
old-time  invasions: 

To  Walis  fled  the  cristianitee.1 

1  Man  of  Law,  1.  446. 

322 


Piers  Plowman  53 

Gower  mentions  Wales,  but  only  to  say  that  it  was  the  place  from 
which  came  the  bishop  who  baptized  King  Alice.1 

All  those  personal  notes,  scattered  in  versions  belonging,  as 
everybody  acknowledges,  to  dates  far  apart,  accord  quite  well  one 
with  another.  If  Mr.  Manly's  four  anonymous  authors  are  respon- 
sible for  them,  they  showed  remarkable  cleverness  in  fusing  into 
one  their  various  personalities,  to  the  extent  even  of  growing  more 
talkative,  "cautious,"  and  "pedantic,"  as  years  passed,  so  as  to 
convey  the  impression  of  the  same  man  growing  older — the  more 
meritorious,  too,  as  the  taking-up  of  somebody  else's  work  to 
revise  it,  is  rarely  a  task  assumed  at  the  end  of  one's  life,  so  that 
the  chances  are  that  the  supposed  reviser  of  C  was  not  an  old  man ; 
yet  he  cleverly  assumed  Eld's  habits  and  ways  of  speech. 

Not  only  do  the  tone  of  the  work  and  the  nature  of  the  additions 
denote  that  B  was  written  by  an  older  man  than  A,  and  C  by  an 
older  man  than  B,  but  the  fact  is  expressly  stated  in  the  course  of 
the  private  confidences  added  in  each  version.  At  the  beginning 
of  passus  XII  in  B,  Ymagynatyf ,  besides  telling  us  that  the  author 
has  followed  him  "fyve  and  fourty  wyntre"  (which  one  is  free  to 
take  literally  or  not),  specifies  that  the  poet  is  no  longer  young, 
and  that  he  has  reached  middle  age,  though  not  yet  old  age. 
I  have  often  moved  thee  to  think  of  thy  end,  says  Ymagynatyf, 

And  of  thi  wylde  wantounesse'  tho  thow  jonge  were, 
To  amende  it  in  thi  myddel  age*  lest  mijte  the  faylled 
In  thyne  olde  elde.2 

In  C,  written  many  years  later,  the  "fyve  and  fourty  wyntre," 
which  could  no  longer  be  even  approximately  true,  are  replaced  by 
the  vague  expression  "more  than  fourty  wynter,"  and  in  the  long 
and  very  interesting  passage,  reading  like  a  sort  of  memoirs,  added 
at  the  beginning  of  passus  VI,  the  author  speaks  of  himself  as 
"weak,"  and  of  his  youth  as  being  long  passed: 

"Whanne  ich  3ong  was,"  quath  ich*  "meny  jer  hennes  .  .  .  ."3 

1  Confessio  Amantis,  II,  1.  904. 

2B,  XII,  6.  " Concupiscentia  Carnis"  had  told  him,  it  is  true:  "Thow  art  jonyge  and 
jepe  and  hast  jeres  ynowe"  (XI,  17).  But  this  occurs  in  a  passage  where  Fortune  shows  to 
the  author,  in  a  mirror  called  "mydlerd  "  (earth  or  the  world),  an  allegory  of  man's  whole 
life ;  it  is  therefore  preserved  in  C.  It  may  also  be  observed  that  it  agrees  with  the  character 
of  "Concupiscentia Carnis"  to  speak  thus  to  men  of  any  age. 

3C,  VI,  35. 

323 


54  J.    J.    JlJSSERAND 

How  extraordinary  is  such  minute  care,  in  four  different 
anonymous  authors,  who  cannot  have  acted  in  concert,  as  each 
must  have  died  to  allow  the  other  to  do  his  revising  unimpeded! 
such  minute  care,  in  order  to  give  the  impression  of  only  one  man 
revising  his  own  work  as  he  lived  on,  and  grew  older! — much 
less  extraordinary,  and  therefore  more  probable,  if  the  whole  was, 
as  I  believe,  the  work  of  the  same  writer. 

Not  only  do  the  personal  intimations  scattered  in  the  three  ver- 
sions tit  well  together,  but  they  fit  such  a  man  as  would  have  com- 
posed such  a  poem,  a  man  of  enthusiasm  and  despondency,  of  a  great 
tenderness  of  heart,  in  spite  of  a  gaunt  exterior  and  blunt  speech, 
a  man  of  many  whims  which  he  may  occasionally  have  obeyed,1 
only  to  feel  afterward  the  pangs  of  remorse,  as  if  he  had  committed 
real  crimes ;  describing  himself  then  in  the  worst  colors,  and,  what 
is  well  worthy  of  notice,  giving  throughout  the  impression  of  one 
who  would  attempt  much  in  the  way  of  learning  without  reaching 
complete  proficiency  in  any  branch,  of  one  with  an  ungeometrical 
sort  of  mind,  who  could  let  many  errors  slip  in  the  midst  of  his 
grand  visions,  pregnant  sayings,  vague  dreams,  and  vain  dis- 
quisitions. Nothing  is-  more  characteristic  than  the  description 
of  himself  he  attributes  to  Clergie  in  the  very  first  version  of 
the  poem: 

The  were  lef  to  lerne*  but  loth  for  to  stodie.2 

In  a  line  added  in  B,  he  makes  Holy  Church  recall  his  lack  of 
steady  zeal: 

To  litel  latyn  thow  lernedest'  lede,  in  thi  gouthe.3 

He  describes  himself  elsewhere  as  "frantyk  of  wittes." 

On  this,  Mr.  Manly  limits  himself  to  stating  briefly  that  all 
such  details  must  be  imaginary,  and  he  refers  us  to  Prof.  Jack 
who  "has  conclusively  proved"  that  all  these  indications  were 
fictitious.     "Were    any    confirmation    of    his    results    needed,   it 

1  Coveytyse-of-eyes*  cam  ofter  in  mynde 
Than  Dowel  or  Dobet'  amonge  my  dedes  alle. 
Coveytyse-of-eyes"  contorted  me  ofte, 

And  seyde,  "have  no  conscience"  how  thow  come  to  gode." 

— B,  XI,  49. 

2  A,  XII,  6.  3fi,  I,  139;  not  in  A;  preserved  in  C. 

324 


Piers  Plowman  55 

might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  author  gives  the  name  of  his 
wife  and  daughter  as  Kitte  and  Kalote  ....  typical  names  of 
lewd  women,  and  therefore  not  to  be  taken  literally  as  the  names 
of  the  author's  wife  and  daughter"  (p.  34). 

But  if  those  names  had  such  a  meaning  that  part  of  the  poem 
would  be  unintelligible  anyway,  whoever  the  author  be.  Those 
names  appear  in  the  splendid  passage  where  the  poet  is  awakened 
by  the  bells  on  Easter  morn: 

Aud  kallyd  Kytte  my  wyf  •  and  Kalote  my  doughter, 
'A-rys,  and  go  reverence*  godes  resureceioun, 
And  creop  on  kneos  to  the  croys"  and  cusse  hit  for  a  juwel 
For  goddes  blissed  body  it  bar  for  owre  bote." 

To  say  that  those  names  are  the  invention  of  a  reviser  is  no 
explanation.  Why  should  a  reviser  choose  them,  if  they  had  such 
a  meaning,  and  what  can  be  his  intention  in  showing  himself,  at 
this  solemn  moment,  surrounded  with  such  a  disreputable  family  ? 

The  truth  is  that  the  opprobrious  meaning  thus  attributed  to 
these  names  at  that  date  is  a  mere  assumption  in  support  of  which 
no  proof  is  being  adduced.  Names  for  which  such  a  bad  fate  is 
in  store  always  begin  by  being  honorable;  then  comes  a  period 
during  which  they  are  used  in  the  two  senses;  then  arrives  the 
moment  of  their  definitive  doom.  The  parallel  French  word 
catin,  derived  like  Kitte  from  Catherine,  was  for  a  long  time  a 
perfectly  honorable  word;  the  second  period  began  for  it  at  the 
Renaissance;  but  then,  and  for  a  great  many  years,  it  was  used 
both  ways.     It  appears  with  the  meaning  of  a  strumpet  in  Marot: 

Une  catin,  sans  frapper  a  la  porte, 
Des  cordeliers  jusqu'en  la  cour  entra.2 

But  the  same  word  is  used  to  designate  the  Queen  of  France  in 
one  of  the  eclogues  of  Ronsard:  Catin  stands  there  for  Catherine 
de  Medicis.3  The  same  name  again  is  employed  much  later  by 
Madame  Deshoulieres  as  an  honorable  proper  name,  and  by 
Madame  de  Sevigne"  as  an  infamous  substantive. 

i  C,  XXI,  473;  B,  XVIII,  426. 

2  Ed.  Janet,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  105 ;  pointed  out  by  Paul  Meyer. 

3Eclog.  I,  first  speech  of  the  "Premier  Pasteur  Voyageur."  Elizabeth  of  France, 
daughter  of  Catherine  and  of  Henri  II,  is  there  described  as  "  fille  de  Catin." 

325 


56  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

As  for  Kalote,  supposing  collet  to  be  really  derived  from  it,  it 
should  be  noted  that  the  oldest  example  quoted  in  Murray's  Dic- 
tionary of  callet  being  used  to  designate  "a  lewd  woman,  trull, 
strumpet,  drab,"  is  of  about  1500. 

Except  for  this,  we  are  referred,  as  I  have  said,  to  Prof.  Jack, 
stated  to  have  "conclusively  proved"  that  nothing  was  genuine  in 
the  personal  allusions  scattered  throughout  Piers  Plowman.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  Prof.  Jack  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  He  assumes 
at  the  start,  in  his  essay,1  the  thoroughly  skeptical  attitude 
which  is  nowadays  all  the  fashion.  James  I  of  Scotland,  we  were 
recently  told,  did  not  write  the  Kingis  Quhair;  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
was  never  in  love  with  anybody,  and  his  poems  are  literary  exer- 
cises; he  himself  says  they  were  not,  and  even  names  with  marked 
animosity  the  husband  of  the  lady;  but  that  does  not  matter;  we 
are  not  such  fools  and  we  know  better.  Shakespeare's  dark  woman 
never  existed  at  all;  he  invented  her  to  have  the  pleasure  of 
drawing  her  edifying  portrait.  As  for  Piers  Plowman,  the  author 
lets  us  understand  that  he  made  the  very  sort  of  studies  that  one 
must  have  made  to  write  such  a  poem;  he  tells  us  that  certain 
ecclesiastical  functions  allowed  him  to  eke  out  a  scant  livelihood; 
that  it  happened  to  him  to  live  in  Malvern  and  in  London,  etc. 
Nonsense,  all  that;  how  could  one  believe  that  he  really  lived 
anywhere  ? 

Yet,  he  probably  did ;  poets  are  not  bound  to  be  always  deceit- 
ful; their  own  private  experience  and  real  feelings  are,  after  all, 
the  subject-matter  readiest  of  access  to  them.  Why  should  they 
ever  go  such  a  long  way  to  invent,  when  it  would  be  so  easy  for 
them  to  copy?  Of  course,  when  they  tell  us  tales  of  wonder,  or 
of  events  markedly  to  their  advantage,  we  should  be  on  our  guard ; 
but  when  they  plainly  state  plain  facts,  of  small  interest  if  untrue, 
contradicted  by  no  document  and  by  no  historical  fact,  the  chances 
are  that  they  speak  from  experience,  the  personal  element  in  the 
statement  being  precisely  what  makes  it  seem  interesting  to  them. 
We  are  not  bound  to  believe  that  a  real  eagle  carried  to  the 
House  of  Fame,  beyond  the  spheres,  such  a  precious  and  consid- 

i  "The  Autobiographical  Elements  in  Piers  the  Plowman,"  in  the  Journal  of  Germanic 
Philology,  Bloomington  (Ind.),  Vol.  Ill,  1901,  No.  4. 

326 


Piers  Plowman  57 

erable  load  as  was  our  friend  Chaucer.  But  when  the  same 
Chaucer  describes  himself  as  going  home  after  having  made  his 
"rekenynges,"  and  reading  books  until  his  sight  is  "dasewyd,"1 
we  would  be  quite  wrong  in  displaying  here  any  of  our  elegant 
skepticism:  for  it  so  happens  that  documentary  evidence  corrob- 
orates the  poet's  statements,  and  authentic  records  tell  us  of  the 
sort  of  "rekenynges"  the  poet  had  to  attend  to  and  the  kind  of 
work  which  would  impair  his  sight. 

Why  believe,  says  Prof.  Jack,  that  our  author  was,  in  any  way, 
connected  with  Malvern?  He  names  those  hills,  it  is  true,  but 
"of  these  he  gives  us  no  description."  Why  should  he?  He  may 
have  had  some  "personal  acquaintance  with  London,"  but  "cer- 
tainly we  cannot  affirm  that  he  ever  lived  there  or  even  ever 
saw  it."2 

Well  may  one  be  skeptical  about  such  skepticism.  When,  in 
the  course  of  a  work  of  the  imagination,  among  fancy  cities  and 
real  ones,  we  find  the  absolutely  uncalled-for  sentence:  "Se  tran- 
spose h  Chinon,  ville  fameuse,  voire  premiere  du  monde,"  we  would 
be  wrong  to  suppose  that  this  name  has  been  put  there  at  random ; 
for  the  city  was  the  birthplace  of  the  author  of  the  work,  Rabelais. 
When,  in  the  same  work,  we  find  that  Pantagruel  "estoit  loge  h 
1' Hostel  sainct  Denis"  in  Paris,  nothing  would  be  more  natural,  it 
seems,  than  to  suppose  the  name  to  be  a  chance  one.  Closer 
scrutiny  has  recently  shown  that  the  Hostel  Sainct  Denis  belonged 
to  the  abbot  of  St.  Denis  and  housed  Benedictine  monks  who 
came  to  Paris  to  study.  Rabelais  was  a  member  of  the  order,  and 
must  have  frequented  this  same  hostel  at  some  of  his  stays  in  Paris, 
hence  his  choice.3 

Nothing  more  elegant,  to  be  sure,  than  skepticism.  Yet  it 
should  not  be  carried  too  far,  for  fear  of  hard  facts  giving  the  lie 
to  its  fancies.  What  more  airy  being  than  Ronsard's  Cassandre, 
with  the  conventional  praise  of  her  perfections,  sonnet  after  son- 
net embodying  ideas,  similes,  and  eulogies  which  had  done  duty 

iffows  of  Fame,  II,  145,  150. 

2  Pp.  406,  413. 

3H.  Clouzot,  Modern  Language  Review,  July,  1908,  p.  404. 

327 


58  J.    J.    JUSSERAND 

numberless  times  from  the  days  of  Laura  if  not  even  earlier.  Yet 
this  typical  creature  of  a  poet's  brain  has  just  turned  out  to  have 
been  a  real  woman,  and  to  have  been  such  as  Ronsard  described  her, 
with  dark  hair  and  complexion,  living  at  Blois,  and  bearing  in  real 
life  the  romantic  and  unusual  name  of  Cassandre,  for  she  was 
Cassandra  Salviati,  an  Italian. 

Prof.  Jack  seems  to  have  himself  felt  some  misgivings,  for 
which  credit  should  be  accorded  him.  After  having  started  on 
such  lines  that  he  was  nearing  apace  the  conclusion  that  Piers 
Plowman  had  grown  somehow,  without  having  been  written  by 
any  man  who  might  have  led  any  sort  of  life  anywhere;  after  having 
taken  the  unnecessary  trouble  to  investigate  whether  the  author 
did  actually  sleep  and  have  the  dreams  he  speaks  of  (an  investiga- 
tion of  the  carrying  capacities  of  Chaucer's  eagle  would  be  wel- 
come) ;  and  after  also  undertaking  to  refute  the  opinion,  advanced 
by  no  one,  that  Langland  was  "a  professional  wanderer"  and 
"spent  his  life  in  roaming  about,"  Prof.  Jack  comes  to  terms. 
And  his  terms  are  not  so  very  unacceptable  after  all.  He  admits, 
as  "quite  probable,  that  in  this  satirical  picture  of  the  clergy  of 
that  day  the  poet  also  had  in  mind  the  struggles  by  which  he  him- 
self rose,  and  was  at  that  moment  rising,  above  the  low  moral  level 
of  the  churchmen  about  him;"  that  the  statements  concerning  his 
being  nicknamed  Long  Will,  living  in  Cornhill,  etc.,  "may  be 
true;"  that  we  may  find  "between  the  lines"  in  the  poem  "valu- 
able hints  for  drawing  a  rough  sketch  of  his  life;"  that  he  him- 
self, Prof.  Jack,  should  "not  be  understood  as  denying  to  it  all 
autobiographical  elements;  the  opinions,  hopes,  and  fears  of  the 
author  are  surely  here."1  This  is  enough  to  enable  us  to  maintain 
that  Prof.  Jack  has  not  "conclusively  proved"  the  autobiograph- 
ical details  in  the  poem  to  be  "not  genuine,  but  mere  parts  of  the 
fiction."     He  has  not,  and  does  not  pretend  that  he  has. 

So  long  as  no  positive  text  or  fact  contradicts  the  plain  state- 
ments in  the  poem,  we  hold  ourselves  entitled  to  take  them  for 
for  what  they  are  given,  and  to  consider,  at  the  very  least,  that 
the  sum  of  accessible  evidence  favors  our  views  rather  than  others' 
skepticism. 

l  Pp.  410,  412,  413,  414. 

328 


Piers  Plowman  59 

We  persist  therefore  in  adhering  to  our  former  faith,  and  in 
rejecting  the  hypothesis  of  the  four  or  five  authors  revising  one 
single  work,  each  taking  care  to  write  as  if  he  was  an  older  man 
than  his  predecessor,  leaving  behind  him  nothing  else  in  the  same 
style,  and  dying,  each  in  succession,  to  make  room  for  the  next. 
We  hold  that  the  differences  in  merit,  opinions,  dialect,  etc.,  do 
not  justify  a  belief  in  a  difference  of  authorship,  and  that  the 
shifted  passage  so  cleverly  fitted  in  by  C  at  its  proper  place,  far 
from  hurting  our  views,  confirms  them.  We  believe,  in  a  word, 
that,  as  we  read  in  one  of  the  MSS,  "William  Langland  made 
Pers  Ploughman." 

Before  coming  to  an  end,  however,  I  must  repeat  that,  strongly 
as  I  dissent  from  Prof.  Manly's  conclusions,  my  gratitude  toward 
him  for  his  discovery  and  my  sympathy  for  the  sincerity  and 
earnestness  of  his  search,  equal  those  of  any  other  student.  It  is 
certainly  difficult  to  enjoy  better  company  than  Professor  Manly's 
on  the  road  leading  to  the  shrine  of  "St.  Treuth." 

J.  J.  Jusserand 
Washington 
November  9,  1908 


329 


W1VERS.TV  OP  CAU«*N.A  L.BRARV 

Los  Angeles 
Thisbo„kUDUEon«he.as.date«a.nPe,Wo». 


